Wednesday, July 31, 2002
Hey, where's the evidence that says Rumsfeld isn't a terrorist? I'd say put that fucker in jail, right the fuck now.
And a short one that I can't be bothered to encrypt since it's totally short and not very spoiling: "Too bad. I've been changing some stuff around during today to make it prettier. I'll be working on it on and off this week, so if something doesn't work, check back later. It runs right at the moment."
The dearth of definitive proof of an Iraqi threat against America began to go international. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld appeared before NATO not long ago and demanded that they support America's looming Iraq war. Most of the NATO nations appeared ready to do so - they trusted that America's top defense official would not come before them and lie. But when they tried to ask questions of him about the basis for this war, Rumsfeld absolutely refused to answer any of them. Instead, he offered this regarding our utter lack of meaningful data to support a conflict: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."
I fell off my chair when I read this, and you all know why!
alex: so minidiscs CAN be useful!
I have just installed the new RealOne player from RealAudio, for mac os x. It's... amazingly good. I had before boycotted Real because their software has notoriously SUCKED ASS. But this... it's small, unintrusive, and simple. One application, automatically opens your files and runs smoothly. Very nice. I am impressed, duly.
the last couple of weeks i have been in paris and reykjavik. work and play. beautiful places. i too fell in love with the streets, and when i got home tonight i had a minidisk sitting in an envelope which i am listening to and it has a streets track on it. also a track about a sentimental artist, which i may post the lyrics of here later.
as for smallfish gigs they usually do harddisk recordings of the live shows for archive, although the last show i was at (kitchen motors) fuzzucksorred up - the disk overflowed and the data was lost, so i may sneak my md into the mixer maybe. unless i'm in bath... or the bath...
wow this minidisk just sneaked in some yummy fur inbetween loads of electronika... and now there's a track about buffy... is she a vegetable or a mineral? oh no, it's muffy. she's a centerfold star now. this track is odd. i like it..
oh yeah, whilst in reykjavik i listened to a lot of A212 and gave it to a few icelandic kids.
more yummy fur? oh no, this is the male nurse....
oh yeah, whilst in reykjavik i listened to a lot of A212 and gave it to a few icelandic kids.
more yummy fur? oh no, this is the male nurse....
Tuesday, July 30, 2002
Madonna Over Yorkshire, plays live at Smallfish, .......
-for us overseas.....can we get a recording??
let's take a trip, not trip of body but of spirit where transmissions
from deep space come from within, electromagnetic waves oscillating
subatomic particles carrying messages from the vast beyond,
submitted to the will of the dominatrix of techno love.....
skyrocketed thru the creaters of you mind....you are in deep space.
For Mr. Fernandez:
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[The Streets are very good. Like that guy a lot. Getty are PR-imbeciles]
"Why, when, and how does a large art organization sue an individual
net artist under the DMCA? Fortunately Curt Cloninger of lab404.com
has made a website to chronicle the dirty details.
"Sometimes net art and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ARE two
great tastes that taste great together."
http://www.playdamage.org/getty/
"back to the real world ---
the small fish gig is at 8pm on 8th of august
theres an 808 in their maybe i should play at 8 past 8 "
Madonna Over Yorkshire, plays live at Smallfish, Old Street, London, August 8th at 8:08PM.
All watchers of "Six Feet Under" will have wondered at the synchronicity between the theme for that show and the work of Mr. Minns. Indeed.
Pop and Celebs
Ulrika Jonsson of a preacher man
Ted Turna-na-na hey hey goodbye
Chris Rock around the Clock
Paddy Ashdown, down, deeper and down
Jim Carrey On Camping
Conan O'Brien May
Bo Diddley Squat
Sammy Ha-garfield
Barry White-snake
Leila Khaled Zeppelin
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
bravo! that's a fantastic list.
network overtime
buddha's feast or famine
peanut butter cups and saucers
optimistic pizza
dav, make sure you eat something before you get your shots. i went for a typhoid, thinking i could grab a bite after, had to wait an extra hour, got shot, then passed out in the hallway as i was all cagey and rushing to leave... not one of my most glamorous moments. nice nurse gave me a ride home though, so all was not lost...
Monday, July 29, 2002
triplets...
michael caine & abel
continental drift into the subconcious
self raising flour arranger
(watching) the end of the world trade center
asterix the gallstone
volkswagon beetle mania
can't think tank
bearing it in mind control
media whore of babylon
dalai lama farm
telephone exchange of circumstances
edison gramophone sex line
a sideways luc ferrari
fireman's lift attendant
ski resort to violence
mermaid in england
pandora's boxing gloves
king solomon's mines a pint
internal clockface
crocodile m for murder
the three musketeers before bedtime
journey to the centre of the earthenware pot
muffin de siecle
grizzly bear with me
migraine of truth
saint georges cross purposes
my love of this landmine
down the plughole in one
balls in the air traffic control tower
reality and biscuits
european commission impossible
Sunday, July 28, 2002
Hey
I went to see "Game On" today at the Barbican - a great exhibition but quite patchy in some places (several versions of sega and nintendo ting, but only one zx spectrum for example!). Anyone else been?
Also saw the exhibition at the Curve gallery there too, which was not so great. And got hot and tired on the bus that replaced the tube between Baker Street and Moorgate due to King's Cross maintenance.
I'm going to Mauritius in September and have to get jabs on Tuesday. I haven't been injected like that since school. Eeeeeeek!
n.b. JB you need to send that Chelsea pic to b3ta!
Saturday, July 27, 2002
Friday, July 26, 2002
IRAQ: PHASE ONE UNDER WAY
Pravda.Ru sources in the Gulf have confirmed that the military build-up by the US Forces has begun, with �tent cities� being built in Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, while in Washington military sources have confirmed that operations have started. The new French Foreign Minister, Dominique Villepin, told French diplomats that she expected the military action from the USA against Iraq to come �soon� after a meeting with US National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice. Military strategists in Washington have leaked to the press reports that the first strike would be with special forces, possibly Delta Force and CIA operationals, together with British SAS and SBS, setting up blockades along Iraq�s road arteries, while aircraft carried out punitive missions and advanced bases were set up in Mosul, in the north and Basra in the south. This, according to Major Charles Heyman, spokesperson for Jane�s Information Group, could take place �much sooner than expected�, in August or September. These bases would be used in a second phase next Spring with a large invading force of some 250,000 troops liaising with Kurdish and Shi�ite guerrillas. A legitimate basis for such an attack has not yet been declared. John ASHTEAD PRAVDA.Ru LONDON UNITED KINGDOM Pravda
"The fast-food industry has wrecked my life," Caesar Barbar, one of plaintiffs, told the New York Post.
Mr Barbar - a 57-year-old maintenance supervisor who weighs almost 125 kilograms (275 pounds) - said he regularly ate fast food until 1996, when a doctor warned his diet could potentially kill him.
Why would you make yourself appear so STOOPID? I haven't been in a burger place for lord knows how long, and even then it was only for a very desperate McShit. What do these people want, a fucking instruction pamphlet and full nutritional breakdown with every CrappyMeal? Hang on... that crazy idea might just... Naaaaaahhhhh. It'd be in court in a few years going 'I didn't know I was supposed to READ it....'.
Related: Had a very nice e-mail from an American who was after a LSHTM T-shirt from me and I told him we had it in medium. He told me not to bother, writing 'There may be some medium-sized people in the states, but I haven't seen any.'
Bought these comics yesterday:
Ted Benoit - Bingo Bongo et son Combo Congolais (Bingo Bongo and his Congo Combo -it's called something completely different in English, but I can't find an issue of HM where it's in - about Bingo B. Bongo, who is 11 chapters short of his first novel, who loves Elvis, and who somehow has a girlfriend. The style is Belgian school - Herg�, etc - and very funny.)
Pierre Christin / Enki Bilal - Coeurs Sanglants et Autres Faits Divers (Bleeding Hearts and Other Headliners - about a weird cult who make do with self-mutilation - surgically removing their mouths, ears, noses, whatever. Written entirely as a series of newspaper articles with photos drawn upon by Bilal. Very experimental, and very engrossing.)
J�rome Charyn / Fran�ois Boucq - Bouche de Diable (Devilmouth - about an orphan with a natally split upper lip -what's that called- who winds up working for a communist intelligence agency.)
Patrick Cauvin / Enki Bilal - Hors Jeu (Last Play - the back says: "It was in 075 that the ruling bodies decided to deprecate the ball. After that, a players entry into the goal was to count... The word "football" disappeared: It did not fit this new game... I must be one of the last to remember it... Unfortunately... It was a beautiful game..." hehe. I hate football, but Bilal is genius and that comic is as well.)
Jesus, I hate the combination of Blogger and the firewall at work. I can get to the posting page, but when I hit post & publish, I get 404s. Bloody unfair. The post I had to email myself:
That's what I'm saying. They need to revise their businessmodel before they can start letting other people make macs. Which, now that I think about it, sounds a lot like what they're doing with iTools. Hmm.
PC is not the only choice, nothing is. Try your options, and go for what suits you.
And yes, Macs are too expensive. I have no idea (other than greed) why it's gone so far. If only more producers would get in on the PPC range and make some competition for Moto and IBM or something. I dunno, I'm not a luminary, don't have the answers.
In the end, all one can do is watch and see what happens anyway. It'd be very interesting if Apple opened the specs. Come to think of it, they could sell the rom chip that sits in the mac hardware and be the exclusive seller, thereby making a bit cash from every clone sold.
But seriously, every time I hear some crazed poster on slashdot rambling about how he'd buy a Mac if it weren't so expensive, I think, "yeah, right."
Looks like "IraqAttack" is ON, Pravda and a paper in the UK are both reporting "tent cities" being built in the countries surrounding Iraq.
If they think that they are going to get away with this, they are having a Crack Attack.
"Yale officials filed a complaint yesterday with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Princeton officials apologized for what they called a "serious lapse of judgment" by the director, Stephen E. LeMenager. Princeton placed him on administrative leave pending an investigation of the incident, which was first reported yesterday by the online edition of The Yale Daily News, the undergraduate newspaper."
-next up, beaver sues moose for territory infringement and negligent shrub eating.
Web Player
Still feeling tender and now my boss is playing silly buggers(tm). He's messing with my wages and has delayed payment to my account which will cause my DD's to bounce, incurring bank charges. They isn't the first time this has happened. I'm due back on monday but I'm not exactly inspired to go back. Seeing him could possibly make me turn violent.
Think happy thoughts....Think happy thoughts....
alas it the only real answer these days: PC.
if you have the cash or some hook ups then your in
but otherwize it's really only a do it yourself market.
3grand that is ridiculus considering the options available.
if a p4 2.0 and up with 500-1g ddr ain't gunna do it for you
then you should be doing work at an professional editing facility or
have a home based business. and that machine you can build for 600-
750CAD, yes CAD that is like 375GBP. then you can buy two.
even buy winblows if you like or install linux and put the other one
up on freebsd. all that and a 21' moniter and you would be approaching
the amount of a single mid-topline g4.
boom server & workstation; unix/linux for you web machine, an app running box
and hell even a cheapo linksys is like a hundred dollars.
but if you are at work and they have the cash(like an ea or a design company)
then your all set and chillin. plus depending on what you do you could LEARN a lot more
with a complicated set up like that. i am of the more hardware philosophy. have a problem
or even if you don't i say throw hardware at it.
networking will be done in the pc format forever basically. you can run to 7-eleven to replace
shit, build real thin machines; single purpose. have "that guy in the alley" build you a super
cheap 1u unit. however, you want to run or design an app get a mac.
and yeah they are getting people for breach of terms of service. they must have had a
legal team search out isp terms of service contracts for many months. or is that iana and/or
the backbones bound by the feds that sets that at the core? good question?????
MPAA Snooping for Spies
7:00 a.m. July 22, 2002 PDT
Hoping to end the online trading frenzy that has plagued the music business, the movie industry is hunting down digital film swappers and getting their Internet service cut off.
The action is part of intensifying efforts by the entertainment industry to control piracy, efforts that include invasive technical measures.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54024,00.html
The next computers will be run by love. Only love.
I was pretty insulted by Apple's "Switch" campaign. It just smacks a bit (okay, a lot) of "fucking retarded." I wonder if Apple realizes that NO ONE CARES about these individuals? How can a "Joe Blow" character afford a three thousand dollar (wonky Canadian money) machine? Or a four thousand dollar notebook? Wheee!
And I can't believe Apple is STILL producing machines with g3 chips in them (iBooks). Jeeesus.
I really wish the price was lower so I could, ya know, buy one. Me being a poor student, a ginormously expensive machine seems pretty retarded when I can get the basic equivalent with way for RAM for about, er, six hundred bucks. Hrm, weird pricing there eh?
The only reason I won't buy anything else though is that nothing else will run OS X. There's no way I could use a different OS, no way in hell.
As it is, I'll just have to stick with my old Beige G3 375 (o/c) machine. Maybe, MAYBE I'll buy a g4 CPU for it. But a new computer would be so much better, since the general architecture of this machine, not only its speed, is completely outdated.
Fuck, people! It's a BEIGE MAC! The original iMacs and blue G3s are old for God's sake, but mine is BEIGE! *BEIGE!*
When someone can't replace their machine from Nov. 1998 because the manufacturer has JACKED their costs, that's SAD. Also it is bad. I've tricked this fucker out to (anyone who said macs aren't expandable is just not smart enough to do it right) and it's at the end of the line.
Bah(tm).
Thursday, July 25, 2002
If that is true, then the macs growth has reached its maximum. I dont see why they are trying to recruit new users; the hardware is to much $$, no matter how good OSX is, if you NEED a machine and have a restricted budget, you HAVE to go PC.
There will not be a better OS than OSX for another ten years at least, and even if there were, thats not enough for joe sixpac or jane "it ate half my paper" to spend HUNDREDS of dollars extra for a pretty plastic box and an OS that they will never fully appreciate or use.
Linux developers are not coherent in thier goals so it moved forward like a nebulous cloud-blob so dont expect anything anywhere near as great as OSX for at least 20 years from them (all things remaining the same).
Why should we care? because we all want the best apps running on the best possible OS, and that means OSX. Developers dont have the resources to port everything so they go for the most widely deployed platform, which means that they spend all thier time developing for that inhrerently inferior hairball known as winblows.
That is bad®.
This is eventually going to be a VHS Betamax result, ie the inferior, sub optimal solution winning out because it spread faster, had more movies to watch...you know the story.
OS X is the eyecandy that sells mac hardware. If they make it possible to buy non-apple macs (be it x86 macs or cloned ppcs), they'll take away at least 60% of their revenue. Before that'll happen, they need to figure out a different strategy. 'Twas the reason they pulled the plug on clones back in the mid nineties, the clone manufacturers took Apple's marketshare while the total Macintosh marketshare stayed constant.
sun solaris dude! samba crushes appletalk, ha!
nah, really you are totally totally right but it ain't gunna happen
see, yeah mugsie yeah. does mac do scsi? and i guess
you can raid out an array of mac hd's right? i don't even
know and that's pathetic. i don't know jack about mac's. not
a thing except they look pretty and i can run the terminal.
that is key otherwize i never would have payed(!) attention
to them. that was a brilliant move indeed.
and btw: steve jobs is so loaded. mega rich. do you think they
possibly loose touch after awhile? i don't know? jobs - gates
is there really any difference? really? this is why i always, well....not
jump to the defense of m$ but at least put in perspective. there,
in my opinion and outside of the functionality of the os' themselves, is
no real difference in the evil and $ type catagories. they both squash out
any possible opp for others to squeeze in on their market. that is the
nature of business. i mean hey it's not philosophy you know. so this
will end all the m$ bitching right?
2002 nt7 = shim sham? weaponize space?
"$1,599.00 800MHz PowerPC G4" is just too much. i can build a p4 2.4 for half that with almost a gig of ddr. that is my only real complaint with mac.
I was discussing this today with one of my mac boyz; Mac would rule everything if you could put together your own generic mac boxen from mac manufactured parts on the cheap. I would so do this, you cannot beileve. NO ONE would buy PC parts anymore, what for? And of course, parasi... I mean third party hardware manufacturers would step in and make cool stuff...Jobs is SO WRONG about this its beyond funny.
those adds were poor. it dosen't matter who
did what or why is just matters that you like it and
it fits the job. kinda highschooly. plus 9 is key!! but
"$1,599.00
800MHz PowerPC G4" is just too much. i can build a p4 2.4
for half that with almost a gig of ddr. that is my only real
complaint with mac.
are(were i guess) those the same fish that were becoming transvestites
due to the high levels of passed out birth control pill hormone goo waste
in the water? dead transvestite fish with 6 fingers on each fin. i am seeing
a pattern emerge here.
open(LIFEFORM, ">$dna" ) ;
Did you know that 6000 fish were killed recently in Prince Edward Island because of pesticides?
Potato farmers use these pesticides so they can produce potatoes worthy of the 4" french fry.
4" is the perfect size to stand straight up in a little paper carton.
Plus 8: it never crashes
Plus 9: Terminal
as for the PDF workflow, PDFs make everything simple, except when you are working with fonts that do now allow embedding. You have to outline these before you distill the file, or try and save it as PDF.
Aparently, OSX doesnt struggle to redraw the screen, so its not taxing your processor to hard.
Did you know that configurations following you around was in UNIX ages and ages ago? Switching MacOS to UNIX was the smartest thing they ever did, and it took alot of guts and genius to make it happen.
Construction of Fear
Isn't there something in Disclosure Project about this? Asteroids as a reason to militarize space.
They don't scare me! And if I get hit, I will only break into small sticks...
On Macs: We had the intro to OSX yesterday, I will have a new Mac under my desk by September 1. Plus 1: I will have local admin rights. However they could give that to me now, and I could actually install Quicktime player and watch the Mac ads posted. Plus 2: I can boot onto any machine, and my desktop settings will follow. Well, you can do this with a shared network for PC's, but that would be work for the IS guy (read supported laziness). Plus 3: When I start up an app, it will swoop into the screen, Genie action. Okay, this is cool, but do I want to tax my operating system with simple tasks? Plus 4: It is pretty. Cannot deny it is easy on my eyes. Much like Miss Ellen, cutie. Plus 5: It will streamline our production and the pre-press house will like us more. But we will be staying with a pdf work flow. Huh? All this wingeing about fonts and compatibility, and we are staying with the same work flow? Don't get me started... Plus 6: Shared folders. I can view others' folders, and make my own little webpage for my co-workers to look at. Okay, a definate plus! Built-in f**king around time at work. And I will never have to speak to a co-worker again. I can just stuff a screenshot into their folder and it will pop up on their screen. Oh yeah! Plus 7: Quark will run smoother. There are some weird annoying bugs with my windoze app, but if I had admin rights, I could try and work them out. Oh! But Quark doesn't run in OSX... I am sure there are more pluses, and perhaps it is a better working environment. We will see when I'm actually driving the thing. And for the record, if someone gave me a Mac for Christmas, I'd be pretty happy. But I'd rather have a trip to the spa...
Isn't there something in Disclosure Project about this? Asteroids as a reason to militarize space.
They don't scare me! And if I get hit, I will only break into small sticks...
On Macs: We had the intro to OSX yesterday, I will have a new Mac under my desk by September 1. Plus 1: I will have local admin rights. However they could give that to me now, and I could actually install Quicktime player and watch the Mac ads posted. Plus 2: I can boot onto any machine, and my desktop settings will follow. Well, you can do this with a shared network for PC's, but that would be work for the IS guy (read supported laziness). Plus 3: When I start up an app, it will swoop into the screen, Genie action. Okay, this is cool, but do I want to tax my operating system with simple tasks? Plus 4: It is pretty. Cannot deny it is easy on my eyes. Much like Miss Ellen, cutie. Plus 5: It will streamline our production and the pre-press house will like us more. But we will be staying with a pdf work flow. Huh? All this wingeing about fonts and compatibility, and we are staying with the same work flow? Don't get me started... Plus 6: Shared folders. I can view others' folders, and make my own little webpage for my co-workers to look at. Okay, a definate plus! Built-in f**king around time at work. And I will never have to speak to a co-worker again. I can just stuff a screenshot into their folder and it will pop up on their screen. Oh yeah! Plus 7: Quark will run smoother. There are some weird annoying bugs with my windoze app, but if I had admin rights, I could try and work them out. Oh! But Quark doesn't run in OSX... I am sure there are more pluses, and perhaps it is a better working environment. We will see when I'm actually driving the thing. And for the record, if someone gave me a Mac for Christmas, I'd be pretty happy. But I'd rather have a trip to the spa...
The Ellen Feiss spot is a typical Mac ad; pathetic.
They talk about OSX, but never show how cool it is, never reveal just what makes the mac so attractive. SO WHAT if a bunch of dumbasses have converted to mac? They convert for all sorts of reasons, most of them not a reason at all; "I got one for Christmas" is not a very compelling reason for someone to quit windoze.
It should be easy to tell everyone just how great the mac now is...why are they finding it so HARD??!?
The fact is that Macintosh have never been in a better position to rule everything....but maybe they shouldnt, cuz if this is the best campaign that they can come up with, they dont deserve to rule anything!
BTW the Quicktime there looks spectacularly good.
One more thing; alomst all those dudes are famous!
Shit. Buggered that up. Well. http://www.harrycrews.com/ is what I wanted to point to...
The Dialectalizer.... now I know where Harry Crews gets all his redneck dialogue from.
Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Argh. I just read the goodiepal article in the wire, and I'm positive we talked about him on here, didn't we? Looked in the archive, can't find it. (oh, and you all probably know this, but Akin is mentioned in the article. Nifty!)
Anyway, I have no idea what I'll be writing in 5 years. I wonder if it'll involve porn? ;) Actually only one webmaster has threatened with lawsuits, and I never heard back from him. All the others have been very nice and even said please when asking me to remove listings.
Bedtime! It's already too late and I'm going to be trashed tomorrow. Shit.
thanks a, i find the "other" catagory quite
interesting, wouldn't you say? i didn't
know about the two NA guys. are things being
shaken up for a little, ahem, "restructuring"? hey
bernie ebbs, can i borrow 408$milli? i'm just a
little short on cash.
btw: dude, fusker is completely awesome. people do
get all up in arms i'll bet though, huh? you are just to
up on it for them to handle it would seem mikkel.
mailto:props@mikkel.dk indeed! can't wait to
see what you'll be writing in 5 years and can
i get a copy of it when you do?! ;p
look at this sweetie, will you? name:buttercup. geez!
I don't speak italian, no. So I don't really know much about what he says. Thanks for the props on Fusker! =)
The whole thing comes from the fact that Fusker makes it easier to look at porn. Porn admins get pissed and tell me to stop including their listings, and I tell them to set up their servers properly as it's not my problem that their configurations are crap. Apparently some of them did that (the urls mentioned in the Italian email) and now our poor Italian friend can't see those images anymore.
OI! Oi!!! Honest guv! No takin' the piss out of Barkin' Fellas like Billy and me! Oi! Some daftarsed fashion chain is already tryin' its Mae West wiv the "This machine kills fascists" slogans appropriated for their own 'ighly priced t-shirts. Nuffink is sacred any more. And yer bet yor red-eyed munchie-seekin' skinless dry-North and Southed desperate ass it's expensive.
Guvnah.
The Dialectalizer
OI!!! No taking the piss out of Barking Boys like Billy and me!
Some dumbarsed fashion chain is already trying its best with the "This machine kills fascists" slogans appropriated for their own highly priced t-shirts.
Nothing is sacred any more.
And you bet your red-eyed munchie-seeking skinless dry-mouthed desperate ass it's expensive
can you parse that language for us mikkel?
i no speako it.
and yeah, economics is shim shamery for sure. the
fall of the stock market in the late twenties and early thirty's
still isn't understood completely. keynesian ecomonics is
on it's way out nowadays and it's like a headless horseman with
the body of a american football jock superstar. all is confused and
the horse has a broken leg. i think we should shoot the horse and put
one of those granola eating power walkers in charge(this is an analogy
of course....or is it?). i just don't know anymore.
From:� renzo.manenti@***
To:� carthagtuek@softhome.net
Date:� 24 Jul 2002, 11:43:22 AM
Subject:� PULIZIA DEL SITO
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CARISSIMO, ULTIMAMENTE HO NOTATO CHE MOLTI SITI SI SONO PROTETTI NON
PERMETTENDOCI PIU' DI "FUSKARE"; NOTO ANCHE CHE MOLTI UTENTI NON SE NE SONO
ACCORTI E CONTINUANO A "FUSKARE" IN QUEI SITI.
AVVERTILI CHE E' INUTILE, SE E' POSSIBILE, PULISCI IL SITO DA TUTTI QUEI LINKS
ORMAI INUTILIZZABILI (GLAMOURMODELS, ONLY100S, ULTIMATECOVERGIRLS,
ULTIMATECALENDARGIRLS, SOUTHBEACHCENTERFOLDS E MOLTI ALTRI.
CERTO DI AVERTI FATTO PIACERE, TI SALUTO.
CIAO, RENZO
... Okay... I tried a bit with babelfish, but it's horrible. I think he wants me to remove dead links from the fusker db, but I'm not entirely sure. I think the "ti saluto" part is cool. I salute you too, Renzo! =D
this amorphous creation and destruction of wealth is bogus. it has no real value.
it is not bread, it is not milk!
I was having a conversation along these lines with a banker friend. The only way you can have investment in a company and not have the sluctuaion (yes, sluctuation) of wild share trading is to set up an exchange specifically designed to dampen down these effects. It would have to be an "ethical exchange", where people are investing for profit AND the good of the community. There would have to be restrictions on when and under what curcumstances you were allowed to sell your shares, and also, the accounts of the companies on this exchange would have to operate an open accounts policy, where every day the accounts are open to scrutiny. This would stop the "shenanigans" of the type that we have seen recently.
I quoted that word, because I dont think these companies are run by bad people, and Im not up in arms about the accounting practices either. These companies are FORCED to do the things they do just to stay in profit / exist; forced by over regulating, over taxing governments that leave them no option but to become creative.
I hated Economics at school. Everything was theoretical, and our tutor knew he was bullshitting us, because when we asked him why the economy could not be precisely controlled, he had no answer for us.
"If ifs and ands were pots and pans, Economics would be cookery" Akin Fernandez
Economics is a scam, like weather forcasting, only worse, because economies are small scale, and modelable, unlike the weather, which is unweildly and large. Over one hundred years of theories, the fastes computers fed with the most refined mathematical models, and they cant get inflation under control....actually, do we WANT them to be able to control the economy like a finely tuned engine? Seeing that "they" are the devils spawn.
i think the price is good luck.
Speaking of the devils spawn..... :]
so i have been mulling this over for a while now and
wanted to bring it up. i know how the market works and
why it exists but why does it have such an effect on our
economies. i barely know a hand full of people who invest in
it and that goes for people i know who own businesses! why
do we let a bunch of jocks who, in high school we all would have
hated, run our economies. aren't morgage/interest rates enough to
drive our economic system. why put it emotionally in the hands
of a bunch of texas gamblers!! that is basically what they are and my
bet is that over time(in our life time[mark my words]) we will see a lot less
of a puncuation on the stock market. companies really use the selling
of stocks in thier business to manufacture value or perceived
value as it were.
this amorphous creation and destruction of wealth is bogus. it has no real value.
it is not bread, it is not milk! it is created wealth from the manufacuring of
perceived value. not what we should hold as the indicator of value in a company.
bogus bogus bogus.
and btw: kettle chips are the greatest thing ever! yogurt and green onion! holy
crap they are good! and a cobra beer too? what a way to spend the afternoon!
and i think the price is good luck.
Reading Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks, for the umpteenth time. It was certainly worth his while putting so much effort into defining the Culture.
Yesterday, for a bag of Kettle Chips, a Cobra beer, a bottle of Spa water, a bottle of Snapple.
Luckily, the future looks rosy. Especially for interactive guides to forthcoming conflicts.
Let John Hegley brighten your miserable world.
Just stop...please.
The Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon had earlier hailed the assassination of the founder of the military wing of Hamas, Salah Shehada, as a "great success", despite the total death toll of 15.
An Israeli army statement blamed Hamas. "Regretfully, this is what can happen when a terrorist uses civilians as a human shield and their homes for places of refuge," it said.
Or "This is what happens when we use F16s to assassinate one person in a crowded town. What do you expect? So sue me."
Only four of those killed were in the house itself. Most of the victims were in neighboring buildings. Shit.
Ariel Sharon. Can you see the halo? Or not?
Whew. I've had one day from hell. There's nothing worse than a sudden and violent attack of the flu. The illness has subsided a bit, so I am allowed to walk again. I am also allowed to eat some food again, too, now that the puking has subsided. I can still barely sit down because my back hurts so much, and I have to squint at the computer screen because it feels as if my head is about to explode. I hate these kind of headaches (not that I love any other kind).
I hate being sick.
Also, this is a very very interesting (and hilarious) sociological study.
True Porn Clerk Stories
search string = "irdial"
30-bit binary equivalent = 010011001000100010010000101100
search string found at binary index = 2597889316
binary pi : 0111100001001100100010001001000010110000100111000111010101101111
binary string: 010011001000100010010000101100
character pi : jacjicd;yaskxirdiald,nuwtouvcn,lyuon_g
character string: irdial
Tuesday, July 23, 2002
I wouldn't really call a program that generates pi compression in the same sense as zip & rar. It's more like a formula.
Remember those dudez that were trying to sell a "new compression algorithm" that worked on the principle that every string of random numbers could be found in an incomensurable / irrational number? All you have to do is specify the start point and end point of the string, and provide the formula that creates the whole set of numbers and you have super small "compression".
we woke up this morning to a radio show ensuring
regional vancouverites that telus was going to keep
consistent connectivity on the uunet backbones due to
"smart routing"(the bgp's with ospf?? this confused me a bit) in case
of an total uunet/worldcom collapse. i highly doubt that the
us gov would allow this to happen(an oc-48-192c network to fold)
no matter what their books say but even so a lot of ccie's+ are going
to get contract work as i am totally sure some things may need to be
re-routed at some point soon. uunet is the 2nd largest oc-48 backbone
supplier in the us and probably the largest up to oc-192 in the world so the love
is going to need to be spread me thinks.
also: we just did some more testing here between a couple of vancouver
locations and because this building is literally right across the street my upstream
quoted ceiling of 640kbps is actually moving at 80+kBps x 8 being a massive
800kbps!! needless to say i am reluctant to move from this location!
are you in pi?
i had heard that they had to close the mbridge for a while after it
opened due to the weight of all the pedestrian causing the bridge to
sway kinda violently. i guess it got straightened out later though. was
anyone there on opening day? the video shows this too. beautiful looking
structure though.
I wouldn't really call a program that generates pi compression in the same sense as zip & rar. It's more like a formula.
For the sake of argument, you can call pis digits random, when you're talking compression, because it gets very near. In many cases more random than pseudo-random number generators (rand()). I'm tired.
Oh, and I have a 100 million decimals ;) I think I'll use it to write some really crap music. Maybe I can fudge about and get some drone going, that'd be fun.
-rw-r--r-- 1 carthag unknown 100000002 Jul 3 12:58 pi_clean.txt
(the extra two are the "3.")
"When discussing the notion of compressing random data, you will frequently find yourself tied up in terminology problems. It seems likely that we aren't all working from a clear-cut definition of the word "random." For example, you probably won't get an argument from a casual listener if you say that the digits of pi are random.
However, if the digits of pi are random, we have a problem, because you can clearly write a fairly short program that can generate zillions of digits of pi, meaning that those so-called random digits are heavily compressible. Does this mean the digits of pi aren't random, or does it mean that random data can be compressed?"
Interesting.
RAR compresses 10 million digits of Pi better than gzip:
original file 12,977,091
gzipped 45%, packed length 5,908,141.
RARed 41% packed length 5,328,433.
This was an unformatted listing of Pi btw.
A Richard Rogers building, that you can see in 3D:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/models/88_Wood_Street_mod.html
His latest project, which is next door to his offices on the Thames:
http://www.albionriverside.com/
London is looking pretty spectacular at the moment The Millenium bridge is a gas, with the Tate Modern at one end and St Pauls at the other. Spectacular:
http://www.arup.com/MillenniumBridge/index.html
"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." -Frank Zappa
Toyo Ito's Tower of Winds was part of the electronic music label Caipirinha's Architettura series exploring the synergy between architecture and electronic music.
Savvas Ysatis & Taylor Deupree created the corresponding music.
One of the other pieces in the series is David Toop's music to go along with Itsuko Hasegawa's Museum of Fruit. It is an amazing building.
"Located in Yamanashi, Japan, within sight of Mount Fuji, the Museum of Fruit is a cluster of three domes - a tropical green house, an atrium event space, an educational workshop for teaching. Odd-shaped and assymetrical, the structures suggest a variety of natural forms: marine molluscs attached to a seaweed-covered flat rock at low tide; armadillos, beetles or seed pods, squashed fruits fallen from a tree and eaten by insects from within, sleeping snails, even the bulging eyes of some giant, supine creature."
for non-mission critical, upgrade as you see fit. Get the newest one and play with the cool features, give feedback.
for mission critical, there are two ways: Wait for 1.1-stable, and try that. OR: set up a test-environment, run with the 1.1 when it gets stable, see how it influences your environment, is anything different. When finding quirks, report to the developers, and see how it turns out. Upgrade when it works.
The basic reason to keep using 1.0 would be that it works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it (and break it by "fixing" it). Imagine a school with 600 students and one sys-admin. He should not update to 1.1 at first chance and get complaints from everyone if something breaks. He should go the test environment way.
So if we are using mozilla for..."life", should we upgrade to 1.1 or stick with 1.0, and if the answer is "yes stick with 1.0" how will the developers get sufficient feedback to properly develop the 1.1 branch? (i always use the talkback builds)
With the linux kernel AFAIK, you can upgrade your kernel and not break anything; each time mozilla goes to another version number, things like enigmail instantly break, and we have to wait for the enigmail developers to catch up.
Also, when will the 1.0 branch die? What would be the point in continuing to use (and maintain) what will quickly become an inferior browser when there is the 1.1 branch? Are there so many mozilla developers that they can spare time to maintain, even at the level of incremental bugfixes TWO branches of Mozilla? How many times are they going to branch mozilla?
It's typical development for a lot of open source projects. The linux kernel is maintained the same way.
There's a stable version, 1.0, which gets bugfixes and is made more stable, etc.
There's a feature-version, 1.1, which gets features and such, and will eventually be the stable one.
For a lot of companies, it's more preferable to stick with the 1.0 browser and only update those versions (will be called 1.0.1 through 1.0.4505357547474), as they get to know the quirks and won't have to worry about some new crazy feature getting put in opening all kinds of holes (who knows what else) when they have what they need right now. If a hole shows up in 1.0, a patch will be available without the need for updating to some new version you don't know.
From: "Xeni Jardin"
To: "Declan McCullagh"
Subject: Der Spiegel on TIPS: citizen-spy ratio would be higher than in fmr GDR
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 09:11:15 -0700
Interesting analysis of TIPS in German-language Der Spiegel today, which
includes detailed comparison of the projected number of TIPS participants to
the number of citizen informants that cooperated with the state security
system in former East Germany. Story projects that the percentage of
citizen-spies under TIPS would be over four times greater than the
percentage of citizen-Stasi-informants in former GDR.
*Very* roughly translated excerpt, between babelfish and my extremely poor
grasp of German:
<>
German:
Google-translated to English:
----------------------------------------------
Xeni Jardin
freelance journalist + conference manager
xeni@xeni.net | www.xeni.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mozilla 1.1b is out. As you can see from the roadmap version 1 has branched off and is being maintained separately.
This cant possibly mean that there are two Mozillas, but then again, why are they wasting time bugfixing 1, instead of putting all their effort into working on one browser?
Freedomship reminds me of the Golgafrinchans in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe...http://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik/FSPHYS/Goodies/Anhalter/trateotu.htm#24
Suffered a 'spontaneous pneumathorax' (collapsed lung) on sunday evening and spent the night in hospital under observation. My chest feels like I've taking a kicking and is fairly tender. On the upside, I'm off work for the week so I get a chance to catch up with everything I've been planning for a while. (maybe finish a few tunes I've got on the back-burner).
I only briefly looked at the Freedomship website and it does look a bit 'Poseidon adventure'. In the current state of paranioa about terrorism, do they have a plan for an amarda of warships protecting it or something?
My song of the day is Goldfrapp - 'lovely head'.
my song of the day: some chain gang song I heard on the radio, comprised of men singing and banging their hammers on railroad construction. Great soulful stuff.
I started showing signs of strep throat infection last night... tried to go to the ER tonight but there is a 3 hour wait. I'll try later on, at 10 or so. I feel like total shit and can't really comprehend most of the interesting discussion that's going on here. My apologies...
Though I can say one thing: Freedomship does look stupid to me.
More precisely, it looks like it would be like a giant, floating, inescapable death trap. Fucking hell. Basically a high-rise on a barge? What are they thinking? That's the stuff of nightmares, how would it ever be seaworthy?
Speaking of floating monstrosities, anyone ever read about the Norweigian cruise ship called "The World?" It sounds like a Terry Gilliam satire. They have psychologists on board who help people afflicted by depression from having too much money. HA!
Monday, July 22, 2002
Either we are all free, or we are all enslaved.
-ah, that's true. let them build a mile long ship. dosen't
mean i have to live on it. i guess you are right about that.
quite a waste of resources though. did you know that it would run
on 100+ independent propeller type engines too? anyway good
point; it's not my place to stop or prevent anybody fropm anything
but i can still think it's stupid, right?
Normal Science?
Robert K. Merton's famous norms of science-communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism (CUDOS)are the locus classicus for most understandings of the inimical and unnatural relation of science and secrecy. Drawing upon his pioneering study of Puritanism and the rise of the new science of the 17th century, Merton extracted what he identified as the guiding norms of the scientific community. In an influential 1942 article, Science and Technology in a Democratic Order, Merton articulated his famous norms as a direct defense of the necessary relation of progress in science with democratic politics. 7 As David Hollinger has observed, Merton made it clear that science could only flourish under a democratic regime, not the fascist regime of Nazi Germany. 8 Merton clearly stated that secrecy was the antithesis of his norm of communism, the belief that scientific knowledge was the common property of all people. My point here is not to claim that Merton invented the idea that science and secrecy are anathema. After all, his claim was that he had identified this practice through his study of the history of science. Central figures in the so-called Scientific Revolution distinguished themselves from other knowledge producers because of their emphasis on the public, and published, character of their knowledge claims. He was merely making clear to social scientists what natural scientists took as a self-evident truth, one that was visible from the emergence of the Royal Society in 17th century England.
For Merton the problem with secrecy in science was two-fold. First, secret science could not provide the researcher with the appropriate credit for their discoveries. Given that the only recognition in Merton's universe came to those who established their priority in making discoveries or breakthroughs, secrecy was clearly not in a researcher's self-interest. While working on a particular problem, researchers might choose not to communicate with others about their work, but when the work was completed they would race to publish their findings. Priority was the means to a reputation, to greater credibility, and to the rewards of science-prizes, grants, and status. 9 Second, secret knowledge was not open to the scrutiny of others who might point out errors and problems related to both the production and interpretation of the knowledge claims. If, as Merton and others believed, science -worked- through the rigorous self-policing of knowledge claims, then secrecy or restricting the dissemination of information might lead to the production of false knowledge. Finally, note that Merton's norms also created an autonomous social space for science, since only other scientists could credibly discuss the veracity of specific technical knowledge claims. Those untrained in the ways of science were incapable of adjudicating intellectual matters.
If Merton and his students, especially Bernard Barber, 10 were among the prime intellectual sources for the post World War II understanding of the relationship between science and secrecy, then we must look to the war itself and the subsequent militarization of American science for the institutional context in which such discussions began. Here we must make a historical point. We may think of the war, especially the Manhattan Project, as the modern occasion for our discussions of science and secrecy, but that would be a profound mistake. Discussions about secrecy were endemic with the establishment of the first industrial research laboratories in early twentieth century America and the great expansion of such laboratories in the post World War I context, what one observer called a fever of commercial science. 11 Similarly, the fear that corporate monopolies might control the production of scientific and technological knowledge, as presented in the Temporary National Economic Condition (TNEC) Hearings of 1939, was an early analogue of postwar fears of the military control of science. 12 To an extent we are largely unaware of, wartime discussions of secrecy drew upon these earlier debates as well as the recognition that for many industry had not affected science in a negative manner. On the contrary, many began to conceive of industrial research laboratories as universities in exile, a view that had little relation to corporate reality. With this caveat, let us turn to the war.
Google!
freedomship is well, $tupid.
But ummmm the smartest people dream about it...
You cant have it both ways: you cant stop people from moving, building boats, flying baloons, bothering no one, minding their own business, AND demand that you yourself be free. Either we are all free, or we are all enslaved.
Science and scientists would be better served by choosing other words to explain advances in developmental biotechnology to the public.
Whatever word they chose, it will be appropriated and used. If Toffler had used the word "replicoid" that word would have taken hold instead of "clone".
This is moot however. What scientists cannot grasp is that they are SERVANTS, and that they have RESPONSIBILITIES.
This Lee M. Silver sounds like the man who invented the transistor who said that man would never land on the moon, twelve years before it happened, or the "scientists" that said if a man travelled faster than 30mph in a train he would suffocate due to the lack of air.
He is also condecending: "Words that we expect to be generally used ... should be short, euphonious, phonetically spelled, easily pronounced and different from any other word in ordinary use so that it [sic] will not suggest any other meaning than the one desired." the worst type of ambassador for science.
In a perfect world, there would be no reason for science and its evil practicioners to have ambassadors
NB this is not to say that all scientists are evil, blah blah blah.
freedomship is well, $tupid.
50,000 people and it's going to be nothing
more than a giant death trap. and you are reading
and posting investors jibberish. it is bad and
we don't need to discuss it. i'd rather yell about
stupid scientists.
here this should help too: 10 knots max and tsunami.
you do the math. "hey i have an idea, let's ESCAPE
from the sociaty we just fucked up so bad it's completely
in shambles. and living on the moon isn't totally yet possible
so i guess we can build a ship and get away from this human
slime". i feel a war coming on. perhpas a death trap like that isn't
so bad considering the scumbags who would live on it.
Amazingly, I was looking at this site http://www.templetons.com/brad/ship.html due to the TIPS business, and lo and behold, Brad Templeton wants to build his own ship!
That [was] only 26 characters including punctuation and spaces.
Come on!!!!
Let me help:
COMMON MISPERCEPTIONS
Because Freedom Ship is novel and complex, public misperceptions about it can arise. We feel it would be helpful to potential investors to know what the most common ones are.
1. Misperception: The primary focus of the project is to build a big ship.
Facts: The primary focus of the project is to create a community that offers unique life-style opportunities. Freedom Ship would be the world's first mobile community. It would provide an international, cosmopolitan, full-spectrum, residential, commercial, and resort city that circles the globe once every two years. It would offer a wide array of novel opportunities for business ownership, travel, and daily living. The ship is as large as it is, simply because that is the minimum size required to make the community economically self-sustaining and a desirable and attractive place to live.
2. Misperception: The project is an attempt to create a new country.
Facts: As is the case for every sea vessel, Freedom Ship will be subject to international maritime law and the laws of the country whose flag it flies. It will operate under the same rules and regulations as a cruise ship. The Freedom Ship community will adhere strictly to established international legal principles. There is no intent to establish a new world-view or legal system in any manner or degree.
3. Misperception: The ship is a tax dodge.
Facts: The Freedom Ship community has not been conceived as a tax haven. While the community itself will levy no taxes, citizens of countries such as the USA would not realize any income tax savings by residing in or running businesses in the community, at least at the federal level, since American citizens are taxed on their worldwide income. USA citizens living abroad are given tax deductions, but not if they reside on a ship. Citizens of certain other countries may realize tax savings by residing in or running businesses in the Freedom Ship community, as they would by residing in or running businesses in any country outside their own. Nonetheless, that is not one of the reasons the project was conceived.
4. Misperception: Freedom Ship should be built in a shipyard.
Facts: The only commonality Freedom Ship has with a conventional ship is that it is a sea-going vessel. Designing and building Freedom Ship is not a typical marine engineering project. A conventional hull the dimensions of Freedom Ship would simply break apart. Even if this were not the case, a conventional hull would cost many times as much and would be significantly less safe and stable. Because of its size, Freedom Ship cannot be built in any existing shipyard. Nor would a shipyard have anything to offer. Freedom Ship is basically a flat-bottomed barge with a conventional high-rise built on top.
ok, i can do it in three words: freedomship is stupid.
is that good enough? what are we talking about? cloning
is bad. very very bad. it should never be done. ever. there isn't
anything more to say. you can clone a stem cell or clone
a line of text but cloning of an entire organism is pathetic and
makes you very uncool.
Here's one I cloned from Natures website earlier...Nature 412, 21 (2001); doi:10.1038/35083650
What are clones?
LEE M. SILVER
Lee M. Silver is in the Department of Molecular Biology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544,
USA.
They're not what you think they are.
"Words that we expect to be generally used ... should be short, euphonious, phonetically spelled, easily pronounced and different from any other word in ordinary use so that it [sic] will not suggest any other meaning than the one desired." With this explanation, Herbert J. Webber coined the word "clone" in 1903 to describe a colony of organisms derived asexually from a single progenitor. Webber's contribution to "a more exact expression to our thoughts" found quick acceptance among botanists and gained favour among biologists working with cells in culture. As late as 1965, the science-fiction novel The Clone still used the word according to its original connotation (albeit with an absurd plot) to describe a cellular blob expanding across the sewers of a city.
A clone of animal siblings can form naturally, on occasion, as a result of asexual reproduction from a single progenitor embryo. However, in contrast to plants, whole animals cannot be grown directly from cells that have begun to differentiate into a specialized form. Forty years ago, developmental biologists wondered whether this was a true biological limitation or just a technical difficulty. It was this question, rather than interest in cloning per se, that motivated John Gurdon to perform the experiments in which he transplanted nuclei from normal frog cells into enucleated eggs to produce adult frogs. Looking back now at Gurdon's review of his research in a 1968 Scientific American article, I am struck that only passing reference is made to clones (as colonies of embryos), with attention focused instead on the developmental potential of differentiated cells.
The popular understanding of cloning has its roots in Alvin Toffler's 1970 book Future Shock. Toffler took a clear scientific concept and muddled it into the fantastical prediction that "man will be able to make biological carbon copies of himself". Unfortunately, this fictitious version of cloning was presented in a highly influential, non-fiction book. In one fell swoop, clones morphed from the simple progeny of asexual reproduction to sophisticated products of biological engineering created by scientists bent on controlling nature.
Through the popular media, this version of a clone was rapidly integrated into every major language. Ironically, popularization was helped by the very criteria by which Webber had aimed to ensure proper use of the word. The concept of a clone extended to inanimate objects such as computers (PC clones), as well as becoming a figure of speech to describe people ("Tony Blair is a clone of Bill Clinton"). Until 1997, however, the public felt safe in its knowledge that "real" human clones � biological carbon copies � were still securely in the realm of science fiction.
The sense of security was shattered the day that video clips of Dolly the cloned sheep, prancing in her pen, were beamed down to television screens around the globe. To all appearances, Dolly had been created full-grown within a Frankenstein-like Scottish laboratory. Suddenly, the world had a name and an image to attach to the Promethean-like power of bioengineering.
Insight into the current popular view of cloning can be gleaned from the recent US cloning film, The 6th Day. The story begins with a series of newspaper headlines reporting the cloning of Dolly and the completion of the Human Genome Project. The process of cloning is then depicted in stunning detail, including imprinting the DNA as well as the mind and physical features of a living person onto a blank body that is then brought to life.
It is not just the lay public that views cloning in this way. In a recent survey of my students, I discovered that most thought that cloning could do more than just reproduce a genome. A leading US publisher of children's books recently released Who Cloned the President?, presenting the full-grown-copy version of cloning as a scientific fact. The real US president, George W. Bush, has said that "no research to create a human being should take place in the United States"; and Ian Wilmut, who brought us Dolly, writes with Rudolf Jaenisch that "we would never be in favour of [using cloning technology for] copying a person".
I was recently contacted by a Dutch television producer for my reaction to reports that a fringe religious group was ready to use cloning to bring dead children back to life. For the umpteenth time, I explained that no technology exists for making
copies of people, and that real cloning technology might only lead to the birth of a unique and unpredictable child who had the same DNA sequence as someone else, but nothing more. The producer was abrupt and dismissive: "Dr Silver, you are not aware of what cloning can accomplish. Clones are not what you think they are." (my italics: re, what 'the press' think and report)
After years of believing otherwise, I realized that he was right. The scientific community has lost control over Webber's pleasant-sounding little word. Cloning has a popular connotation that is impossible to dislodge. We must accept that democratic debate on cloning is bereft of any meaning. Science and scientists would be better served by choosing other words to explain advances in developmental biotechnology to the public.
References
1.
Webber, H. J. New horticultural and agricultural terms. Science 28, 501-503 (1903).
2. Thomas, T. L. & Wilhelm, K. The Clone (Berkley, New York, 1965).
3. Gurdon, J. B. Transplanted nuclei and cell differentiation. Scientific American 219, 24-35 (1968). | PubMed | ISI |
4. Toffler, A. Future Shock (Random House, New York, 1970).
5. Roy, R. & Woodruff, L. Who Cloned the President? (Golden Books, New York, 2001).
6. Weiss, R. in The Washington Post 29 March, A10 (2001).
7. Jaenisch, R. & Wilmut, I. Don't clone humans. Science 291, 2552 (2001)
Can't find it. And fucked over AGAIN by IE. Well, the jist was that humanity must face up to itself ASAP! And that means the big questions... who am I? why am I? what is human? And the kick for all this is genetics, the human genome project, cloning... Sounds a bit limp now. Sigh. Will post if I ever find it...
I have a couple of large posts coming today, because I think Iif I link them you won't get through unless you have a subscription to the journal Nature... bear with me. Nature ran a series of Millennium Essays in 99, looking back and forward on all aspects of society... I'm hunting for the two I remember in particular... Here's one...
Nature 400, 721 (1999)
Rules of the game of doing science
JOHN ZIMAN
John Ziman is at 27 Little London Green, Oakley, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire HP18 9QL, UK.
Scientific good practice � disinterested, communal, universal � is not 'blobby' idealism, but a social framework to which researchers must conform if they are to prosper. Now, this contract with society is up for renegotiation.
THE NEW YORKER/GEORGE BOOTH/CARTOONBANK. COM
Nineteen-forty-two was a pretty awful year. Democracy had its back to the wall. Science was a sinew of war. But this was also the year when it was shown that science and democracy are indissolubly united.
Robert Merton was a whiz-kid professor of sociology at Columbia University, New York. He was an expert on the place of science in society. So he gathered some of his ideas into a little paper on "Science and Society in a Democratic Order". Its appearance, in the first issue of an obscure journal, is the event I celebrate (J. Legal and Political Sociology 1, 115-262; 1942). Not that I � nor, I suspect, many others � read this paper at the time. It didn't come my way until nearly 30 years later, perhaps as an exchanged offprint, perhaps in a collection of the writings of this now famous scholar. By then its title had become "The Normative Structure of Science". As sometimes happens, a conceptual skeleton constructed to stiffen a slightly floppy argument had proved more enduring than its empirical flesh. Merton's X-ray eye had detected the internal social framework that gives science its strength.
In the then sociological fashion, he described science as an "ethos", held together by "norms". Research results are "communal" � they belong to the whole scientific community. They must be "universal" � independent of class or creed. They must be presented "disinterestedly", and be subject to "organized skepticism". At first, these sound like blobby ideals, mainly suitable for public panegyrics. But Merton saw them functionally, as the regulatory principles of a way of life. These are the rules of the game of doing science, which every player is forced to obey if she or he is to stay on the field.
The Mertonian norms are not just unattainable personal attitudes. They are embodied in innumerable social conventions and mundane practices. These define and constrain our conduct as scientists. Publish � or perish. Face up to the demands of peer review. Cite generously and meticulously. Reward originality and priority of discovery. Present your work impersonally. Exclude ad hominem jibes. And so on.
These requirements are often irksome. We may sometimes be tempted to keep profitable ideas secret, skimp on measurements, fudge data, pirate the work of others, ignore criticism, boost ourselves or vilify our opponents. But our good name is at stake. Without personal credibility, our research would be disregarded, and jobs would no longer come our way. So we strive to perform as expected, and as we expect of our colleagues. The logic of life forces us to think and act scientifically, until it becomes second nature.
Merton's novel insight was that science � he meant 'pure' science, for industrial research and technology work differently � is not just the activity of a community of like-minded individuals. It is a distinctive institution, with a distinctive culture. Its everyday practices dovetail into a compelling social framework. This framework supports a 'method', an attitude of mind, a profession, a body of knowledge. He made us realize that science is driven, shaped and honed as much by its internal sociology as by its philosophy or psychology.
In 50 years, the sociology of science has grown into an established academic discipline. Unfortunately, the focus of this discipline has shifted. Sociology seems almost against science as it strives to put it in its place. Well, of course, scientific knowledge is not uniquely true, science is not the only pebble on the social beach, and scientists, like traffic wardens and airline pilots, are ordinary folk too. These are realities that we should all humbly accept.
Yet science remains a peculiar institution, with its own way of doing things. Love it or loathe it, we need to understand just what makes it tick. Is extreme specialization, for example, an essential cog in the social machine? What winds the clockwork � social imperatives, coordinated curiosity or competitive ambition? How can anybody tell whether it is working properly? Whose hands are on the lever for adjusting its output?
What is more, science is no longer what it was when Merton first wrote about it. The bureaucratic engine of policy is shattering the traditional normative frame. Big science has become a novel way of life, with its own conventions and practices. What price now those noble norms? Tied without tenure into a system of projects and proposals, budgets and assessments, how open, how disinterested, how self-critical, how riskily original can one afford to be?
There is no going back to that world we have lost. Anyway, science has never had it so good as in this past half-century, and is still going great guns. But soon it will be offered a new contract with society. To renegotiate that contract with its eyes open, on even terms, science will need to understand itself much better. That understanding is going to require, not adherence to an obsolete ethos, but a sharp but sympathetic sociological self-analysis. That is the unfinished business that Merton's little paper began.
These guys are the ones who, after six months, cannot put a high traffic database site online (the 1901 census).
Look at the SIZE of it.
when it comes to our social, architectual, cultural
and enviornmental future, there are two ways we can go:
backward$ and forwards.
we must take into account other advances and thought in
energy production. not bigger and better. because bigger usually
means more destructive. better, slimmer, more efficent and less
destructive. zero point energy, fuel cells, geo-thermal. fossil fuels
and carbon cycling are death and NOT in our future, they are temporary.
the food does not cook itself! so the change is our decision directly. are we
waiting for the herd to start moving or our we able to forge our own paths.
you may also find this interesting as well.
Sunday, July 21, 2002
I just got back from camping... had a really good time (NO I DIDN'T GET ANY SO SHUT THE FUCK UP MIKKEL). Much fun was had!
My brain is rather fried right now and I can't think straight though... woooo.
I was SO HAPPY to come home to Apple's announcement that will charging for my @mac.com address. THAT'S INSANE.
FUCK YOU, APPLE.
Saturday, July 20, 2002
never on it to begin with...but definitely now, more than ever before, fischerspooner are off of the artistic roll-call. forever.
--
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 13:37:46 +0100
To: "313 mailing list" <313@hyperreal.org>
From: "Tom Robbins/Magic Feet"
Subject: Fw: Fischerspooner on TOTP - TONIGHT
Message-ID: <004d01c22f21$17b10aa0$7a306bd5@x2n8x7>
> Don't miss Casey Spooner's big moment as FISCHERSPOONER make their debut UK
> TV appearance on TOP OF THE POPS - BBC1 7:00pm.
>
> Expect dancing girls, glitter and jockstraps (!!!)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Simon
>
> PS. Next FISCHERSPOONER single, a cover of Wire's "The 15th", is released on
> FS Studios in October.
Friday, July 19, 2002
A warm welcome to you Mata Hari.
Giving all stakeholders a voice in relation to moral dillemas and ethical questions is really a nice thought that should be practiced some more, but that is not the same as to say that people who have studied ethics cannot have a more professional and qualified point of view.
I would also add, that ethics experts who are muslims would be no less expert, but totally different in thier conclusions on almost every ethical question.
By analogi, what Denise Caruso says in her article is why have chefs in restaurants if most of us can cook?, or why have weather forecasts if anyone can have a opinion about the weather?
Chefs are experts in preparation of ingredients to a formula. The difference between eating Haut Cuisine and gobbling a burger flipped at Dairy Queen are two entirely different things; one is a spritual experience, the other, "chowing down".
We need these "food experts" over simple folk, people with years or experience to prepare food, because they know, from years of hands on experience and rigorus training, how meat burns (caramelization), how to pound a chicken breast, the correct way to prepare a sorbet... and everything else about the way that food ingredients interact with each other, and how they must be prepared and chosen.
The Chef analogy is flawed, because if a person were to have sufficient moral/ethical expertise in the biotech field, the way that the greatest Chefs know about cuisine preparation, she would have to have experience of the consequences and practices of biotech on multiple human generations. No one on earth has (or will have untill the genie is already out of the bottle) that type of experience.
A single Chef can have a great deal of knowledge about cuisine, in biotech, it would be far more difficult for a single person to have enough knowledge to encompass enough of the field to be a comprable expert.
Perhaps a future, bio-engineered person, pre programmed with all the worlds biotech knowledge will be able to sit and act like a "Pope of Biotech"....
Infant Whooping Cough Deaths Rise in U.S. - CDC
ATLANTA (Reuters) - The number of infants dying from whooping cough, once a major killer of children in the United States, is rising despite record high vaccination levels in the nation, federal health officials said on Thursday.
Yahoo News
From: The Moral Minority - We all lose when we leave right and wrong to a clique of ethics experts.
But what mortal could fairly balance the concerns of so many stakeholders � from research scientists who fear for their academic freedom to native cultures concerned about losing biological diversity to genetically modified crops? More to the point: Why should they be expected to shoulder such responsibility? Anyone who has served on a jury knows that most sentient beings, given good information, are capable of reaching a fair moral consensus. So let's find a consensual way to navigate the world that allows progress but mitigates risk.
I can't deny that I was provoked by Denise Caruso's 'view' on Wired. I disagree almost totally with her generalization about ethic experts. When I say almost, is because she surely is rigth about some so-called ethic experts, that misuse their profession and title to advocate for one or another cause, but in general, any ethic 'expert' would know that the best you can do within moral philosophy and ethics is to weight pros and contras, different kinds of theories and present them with their respective advantages and problems.
Giving all stakeholders a voice in relation to moral dillemas and ethical questions is really a nice thought that should be practiced some more, but that is not the same as to say that people who have studied ethics cannot have a more professional and qualified point of view. By analogi, what Denise Caruso says in her article is why have chefs in restaurants if most of us can cook?, or why have weather forecasts if anyone can have a opinion about the weather?
I know that moral is something most people consider to be different than going to the restaurant or seeing the weather forecast (is doesn't affect you in the same way people could say)... anyhow, ethic experts can help clarifying and making a difference between moral questions and bullshit. Consensus and stakeholder thinking is a nice Habermas-like thought, and I believe we should work towards it, but why can't we have some help on the way?
That's all
ARGH. I am sweaty. I want the sun to DIE. NOW. I wish the temperature would stay under 65/20 ALL THE TIME. It's such a freaking pain in the ass. When I get rich I will move north & south depending on weather and have a house on the northpole. Enough of this shit.
Also, if you decide to shut down your server, barreh, you can come to Blight, it's a friendly place.
You can buy Flex on DVD, I heard, so it's probably out there on the web someplace.
I am in a pissy mood. Holy hell.
From Carthag (Jul19 06:41):
Stop making up stupid excuses for not being able to spell.
"Ooh, but English is a liiiving language, see?!" SHUT UP HO.
/me is pissy.
__________________________________________________________
From coduNF (Jul18 21:39):
I spell "whack" as wack.
"Whack" sounds like you're hitting something, therefore it is wack to use it as such.
__________________________________________________________
From brc 56k hell (Jul18 13:08):
pfff i live by my own dictionary
i spell 'whack'as w-a-c-k
an 'son' as p-u-s-s-y
__________________________________________________________
From son wroks (Jul18 12:52):
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=whack
Slang
Exhausted.
Crazy.
Under the influence of a mind-altering drug.
__________________________________________________________
From brc 56k hell (Jul18 02:33):
2 things:
"whack" is like a verb or something
"wack" is some other grammer deal altogether
and:
WTF WAS THAT SPIDER MAN THING
eh its 5am and im carthed [Mikkel says, would you look at that, my nick has come to mean drunk] off my ass . im not thinking as straigt but my typing is oddly phenomial
__________________________________________________________
From son (Jul17 19:32):
brc: the correct spelling of "whack" is "whack," as everybody knows. spelling "whack" "wack" is whack.
__________________________________________________________
From brc 56k hell (Jul17 13:07):
and here is where to voice your opinion about the fee based shit.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/mac.html
get as many people as you can to write how wack it is to charge for email
The Moral Minority
We all lose when we leave right and wrong to a clique of ethics experts. [...]It is widely assumed by both detractors and supporters of genetically modified anything that bioethicists are biased in the same way expert witnesses are. Most biotech companies keep an ethicist on retainer, if not on staff. But leave aside for a moment the inherent conflicts. Why cede a moral monopoly to any group of people? The whole concept of bioethics � as a distinct and separate practice � is bankrupt. [...] [...]The alternative is to continue to concentrate an enormous amount of power into the hands of "experts." No matter how well-intentioned, it's absurd to assume that a few select minds can posit the full array of scenarios better than a broad coalition. What's the worst that can happen? Market collapses triggered by a spooked public catalyzed by some unforeseen consequence, global activism that halts positive technological progress, compensation claims on a massive scale when acts of God are redefined as acts of corporate malfeasance, and the like. The worst, of course, is an irreversible biological event of catastrophic proportions. None of these scenarios are out of the question. [...] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/view.html?pg=2
Am reading The Great Gatsby. London is basking in 20-something degrees of "heat" and a raging cloud of stagnant pollution prowls every street since the wind went on holiday. My eyes are burning from the five-minute stroll up Tottenham Court Road.... urgh.
Smog, 'No Dancing' from Knock Knock. Not while the wires are showing.
Barrie, surely finding yourself drunk at a wedding, one in the morning, pretty girls in floating dresses glide before your eyes.... and then you hear it! 'Dancing Queen' by the god-like Abba... your feet take control, mind is switched off, and you're swept away on a bed of soaring strings and glittering vocals, entranced by the waterfall piano that runs gently down your spine... No? Are you sure? It's a very human weakness...
This Chris Cunnigham thing came back to mind earlier. Video installation called FLEX... the most intense I've seen,... the violence.... with very fitting Aphex music. Not sure if it's available on the web somewhere, but see it if you can, and the bigger the better.
Good lord. You can have our sun, mary.
Alberta is going through the worst draught in ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE YEARS.
This place is turning into a desert! A 350-million dollar farmer's aid package was just announced. It's a veritable disaster.
Of course, global warming does not exist. count on the oil companies to tell the truth! Boy howdy it's hot.
DSL is superior to cable. We did not enjoy the altering flow of bandwidth that cable offered. Oh, but the thought of a telephone + modem... horrors!
I am reading Jitterbug Perfume again. I think its a perfect summer book, good pace, so colourful, rowdy... perfect beach material, if the sun ever shines here again!
I don't think you are missing anything with the dancing, Barrie. Being able to make the music is the step above, I believe. However, you may be so lucky to have someone teach you a few moves, and then, well, you'll get it then... ;)
GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
My ISP = HAAAATE.
It's decided. I am CANCELLING Shaw, even if it means I have to shut down my servers! I'm sick and tired of being DAYS without the internet! AUGH! So DSL it is, we just haven't decided who to choose yet.
Though, being net-less has it's advantages. I started reading "The Silmarillion" by Tolkein. A beautiful and elegant piece of work. If gel works in book form, The Silmarillion would be a prime example. So good.
As for the dancing... I can verily see how people can dance. The flowing of the music going through your body and all. But I just can't get myself to know how to do that. I can mimic the instruments, or play instruments, and that truly feels like connecting with the music, moving with the sound. But just dancing... I don't get it. What am I missing here?
Also, new blogdians = good
Thursday, July 18, 2002
hey dav, go play your cd! expect reaction. what did i read yesterday "everything must change for things to stay the same"
listened to a scary program on gene therapy yesterday. a replay of being human i now understand why the creation of viruses is so important - that is how they get altered genes into the body.
back from tokyo. oh wow... what a culture out there.
i discovered dancing only a few years ago. i went to the first Detroit electronic music festival with somefriends and totally lost it to the sounds booming out of speakers making everybody move move move. and i mean everybody. punkrock-looking kids. moms and dads. candyravers. five year olds. homeless men. black, white, asian, indian, etc. from then on i've searched for what really makes me move. and just about EVERYthing does. electronic dance music was just the beginning. 60s/70s funk really does it. maybe the reason that the electric bass guitar and the highhat/snare drum were invented. Eddie Bo, Charles Wright, JBs. wow. and yes, closing yr eyes most definately helps. you can imagine yourself as a piece of biomorphic material that the soundwaves meld into whatever four dimenional shape is required.
but moving to sound shouldn't be delegated solely to "music". and definately not just to "dance music". sound is a challenge to your body. how you should move with or against or in tandem. the sound of rattling subway cars or ambulance sirens makes me immediately grab for my air guitar and air effects pedals. i will surely dance to the throb of commerical air conditioning units.
and this is to say nothing of Aphex and Kid606 and other leftfield trackmakers. dance-able all. just find the groove and lay into it.
dance as a connection to those around you or as a tunnel into yourself.
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