All those topics that i wish i had time to pursue more earnestly.

Library Smut – pictures for the library voyeur in us all:
http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/hot_library_smut/

Thanks to my friend Kenneth Davis of Prosperos Books who sent me this link, I am happy to share news of a new book titled Libraries, by Candida Höfer. thenonist has done a great job of introducing the content and has some wonderful pictures scanned in. thenonist has this to say in Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut:
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some of the best library smut i’ve seen… though i have a few pictures from the Kobenhavn U. and other places….

I went for a walk this afternoon and decided to try some new food. I went to this little cuban restaurant…, I’d say on 47th street and broadway in astoria/LIC. I wanted to try the cuban sandwich. Of course, they were out of cubano, so I ordered what the person before me had which was chicken and dirty rice. so it is baked chicken with a bit of spice and some vegetables over what seems to be a pound of rice… for six bucks. The rice and beans alone , though it could be spicier, is more than enough for a meal, the chicken is tasty. Perhaps later in the week I’ll try the fish market. it too had a bunch of people in it for lunch.

Geneva Conventions Now Universal:
via Opinio Juris:

This is a landmark month in the history of international law: with the accession of the Republic of Montenegro on August 2, the 1949 Geneva Conventions have become the first international treaty in modern history to achieve universal acceptance.

The irony, of course, is that the US has re-interpreted the Geneva Conventions, especially the reach of Common Article 3, in a way that makes our copy of the convention different (and much less meaningful) than the rest of the world’s….
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the geneva conventions are a necessity… they keep war from being overly monstrous, though it frequently pushes that boundary.

personally i think the convention should be expanded to include a ban on the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons whose purpose is to maim or kill.

Cyborg citizens and digital natives:
Patrik Hernwall discussed the notion of Educology, and how, within this framework, the learning subject can be defined. Building on theories of constructivist learning, he suggested that the learning subject should be viewed as an active, intentional, meaningmaking subject in context. An important part of the context is the tools available and what actions they afford, and this reasoning brought Hernwall to the conclusion that it is fruitful to view the (young) learner as a cyborg citizen.
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Here I take issue with the understanding of citizen. What it means to be a citizen is heavily contested, but qualitatively i think a citizen needs to: participate, be free to dissent(and really actually to dissent)… and that is about it. however, schools and technology have never been very good about encouraging participation and dissent. They are more in line with producing informed, agreeing subjects– subjects that are submissive to their informatic and mediated environments. Digital natives, in my mind, show no significant difference in the capacity to participate and dissent.

Want to Help Us Bring hResume to Mac OSX?:
One of the things I was chatting with Blake about Friday is the cool new project Chris Messina suggested — creating Resume.app for Mac OSX. The goal is to create a simple, sexy desktop app for Mac OSX that would let you create an hResume-compatible resume. Then you could upload it to your own Web site or to a service like Emurse.

Here’s the wiki page for Resume.app. If you know of a Mac developer who should be involved with this project, let us know.
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this seems like a cool project and i’m really posting it because i mentioned hresume to alex in his blog post about his vita the other day.

Mutiny as passengers refuse to fly until Asians are removed | the Daily Mail:
Monarch said last night: “The captain was concerned about the security surrounding the two gentlemen on the aircraft and the decision was taken to remove them from the flight for further security checks.

“The two passengers offloaded from the flight were later cleared by airport security and rebooked to travel back to Manchester on a later flight.”

A spokesman for the Civil Guard in Malaga said: “These men had aroused suspicion because of their appearance and the fact that they were speaking in a foreign language thought to be an Arabic language, and the pilot was refusing to take off until they were escorted off the plane.”

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This is what happens when people are afraid… they turn into racist pigs. The fear of other people speaking in foreign languages is completely unjustified. The real thing to fear are the people who are afraid… Those people will act like herd animals and seriously injure themselves and others…. given the slightest provocation.

Of course, the moral judgement of this situation and the scared people caused the wrong people to be booted from the plane by the airline. The people that should have been left behind are those who refused to board or disembarked without cause. But because there were more of them, they got to fly, and the gentleman who looked scary were booted. I would have done the opposite. I would have said, ‘these gentleman are fine, you do not have to board the flight, and you can purchase a new ticket at your leisure’, that in my mind would have been a good response from the Airline.

CPU ONLINE TRAINING TOOLKITS: Gender For Journalists: Setting the Scene:
This ‘Gender for Journalists’ toolkit is based on those training workshops. It is designed to make you aware of the areas where women are disadvantaged and the role that men can play in bringing about change. I also give guidance on information sources and websites that you can turn to and have attempted to credit the sources I have used. However if I have missed any please accept my apologies.

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gender awareness in journalism…. that would be an excellent point to push for. I hope people take advantage of this toolkit. especially the a-list bloggers should take it into account.

In Search Of Scientific Excellence: L’Oréal USA Announces Call for Applications for 2007 Fellowships for Women In Science Program:
NEW YORK, NY, August 14,
2006 – L’Oréal USA announced today the start of the application period for its esteemed L’Oréal
USA Fellowships for Women in Science program. Now in its fourth year, this national program
aims to annually recognize, reward and support five women post-doctoral researchers in the U.S. who
are pursuing careers in the life and physical/material sciences, as well as mathematics,
engineering and computer science. As part of its commitment to further help exceptional women
scientists reach their goals, L’Oréal USA has doubled the value of its fellowship grants from a
current $20,000 to $40,000 for the 2007 program.

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this looks like a great program, I think we need more programs like this. science starts with having a plurality of scientists with a plurality of life experiences and modes of understanding the world. intellectual diversity is the backbone of science, because it rounds out the ways people can understand and use scientific knowledge. With a heavily male oriented scientific practice, you end up cutting off many of the possible insights about the world, this programs that support increasing the number of women and minorities in science are, in my mind, important.

Wondermark by David Malki ! – 220: In which a Plan comes together:

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its about how many millions you can inconvenience. why? because if you inconvenience them, then they will remember why they are inconvenienced. ‘for their safety’ against … someone. Great cartoon.