randomWalks

Boing Boing seems to attract a knowledgeable crowd. Here, they discuss absinthe.

Age: 30 - “A simple project: Take a photograph of myself every day of my 30th year. Digital, 35mm, 120, webcam, Polaroid, whatever ? as long as I end up with 365 images documenting the year. No real reason, I don’t care that I’m 30, it just seemed like a good project.”

What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob?

With mp3s and CD burners commonplace, the art of the mix is being revived. Burn, Baby Burn! (closed), a “blogger CD swap”, met with unanticipated interest upon being linked from MetaFilter and has closed registration early. The responsible MeFi thread spawned (predictably) an already popular MeFiSwap and also points to a handful of similar projects around the net. I’ve got a couple hundred blank CDs looking for a purpose so I plan to get my hands into as many of these as I can:

• frykitty's greenshoes
• CD mix of the month club
• secret DJ
• midsummer night's burn (european)

"You swipe the license, and all of a sudden someone's whole life as we know it pops up in front of you," said Paul Barclay, the bar's owner.

Mr. Barclay bought the machine to keep out underage drinkers who use fake ID's. But he soon found that he could build a database of personal information, providing an intimate perspective on his clientele that can be useful in marketing.

Now, for any given night or hour, he can break down his clientele by sex, age, ZIP code or other characteristics. If he wanted to, he could find out how many blond women named Karen over 5 feet 2 inches came in over a weekend, or how many of his customers have the middle initial M. More practically, he can build mailing lists based on all that data ? and keep track of who comes back.

The church says priests must be male because Jesus' apostles were male. So should women have stayed out of U.S. government because the founding fathers were male?

Celibacy is not church doctrine but a tradition from the Middle Ages. By that logic, hospitals would still be using leeches.

It may be a news flash to the Vatican, but it's been clear for years that the church is in a time warp, arrested in its psychosexual development. The vow of celibacy became a magnet for men trying to flee carnal impulses they found troubling. In some cases this meant homosexuality, in others pedophilia. (...)

Societies built on special privileges become far too invested in preserving those privileges. They will never do the kind of soul-baring and housecleaning that might raise questions about the kind of secret society that creates that kind of privilege.

Furthurnet “is the first and only 100% non-commercial peer-to-peer network of legal live music created by fans for fans!” They’ve got java-based clients for Windows and for Linux and OS X.

If one looks at the map of the big American bases created for the war, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean.

Picking up the pieces in Ramallah (BBC News)

The men of Amari were taken bound and blindfolded to the Beitounia army camp, where they spent three cold nights under canvas, with little to eat or drink, before their release.

Some families, one of them including three small children, were held captive in their own homes while the troops used them for cover as they occupied the narrow alleyways deep inside the camp.


Their houses had great holes punched in the sides, where the troops had employed the controversial “walking through walls” tactic to avoid being exposed to sniper fire in the alleyways. (…)

The camp’s inhabitants say this was not an “anti-terrorist” operation as the Israeli army maintains, but an operation to terrorise them - and it has worked.

The temptation to be unproductive is so great. We're sucked into the fact that we now have this home entertainment system on our desks.

… and identical twins at that. Perhaps someone from upstairs had a say in this.

During this time of heightened security awareness, we will report suspicious or questionable requests for printing or document reproduction to law enforcement authorities.

HERMENAUT: The B Side of Paradise: The Ten Best Jazz Records for Driving

World Press Photo of the Year 2001

A review of Web-based color pickers will come in handy.

Newsnight: Anthrax attacks (BBC)

Three weeks ago Dr Barbara Rosenberg - an acknowledged authority on US bio-defence - claimed the FBI is dragging its feet because an arrest would be embarrassing to the US authorities. Tonight on Newsnight, she goes further…suggesting there could have been a secret CIA field project to test the practicalities of sending anthrax through the mail - whose top scientist went badly off the rails…

Before the Age of Reason was announced, humanity had polished strategies for interacting with the world of the imaginary and invisible: complicated magic-systems; sprawling pantheons of gods and spirits, images and names with which we labelled powerful inner forces so that we might better understand them. Intellect, Emotion and Unconscious Thought were made divinities or demons so that we, like Faust, might better know them; deal with them; become them.

Ancient cultures did not worship idols. Their god-statues represented ideal states which, when meditated constantly upon, one might aspire to. Science proves there never was a mermaid, blue-skinned Krishna or a virgin birth in physical reality. Yet thought is real, and the domain of thought is the one place where gods inarguably ezdst, wielding tremendous power. If Aphrodite were a myth and Love only a concept, then would that negate the crimes and kindnesses and songs done in Love's name? If Christ were only ever fiction, a divine Idea, would this invalidate the social change inspired by that idea, make holy wars less terrible, or human betterment less real, less sacred?

The world of ideas is in certain senses deeper, truer than reality; this solid television less significant than the Idea of television. Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish.

At Airport Gate, a Cyborg Unplugged (NYT)

Steve Mann has lived as a cyborg for more than 20 years, wearing a web of wires, computers and electronic sensors that are designed to augment his memory, enhance his vision and keep tabs on his vital signs. Although his wearable computer system sometimes elicited stares, he never encountered any problems going through the security gates at airports. On Feb. 18, his experience was entirely different. This time, he said, he was told to turn his computer on and off and put it on the X-ray machine. Still not satisfied, the guards took him to a private room for a strip-search in which, he said, the electrodes were torn from his skin, causing bleeding, and several pieces of equipment were strewn about the room.

Everything it takes to stage a guerrilla drive-in fits neatly into the back of a Honda Civic: a VCR, a video projector, an FM receiver and a generator. The only other things you need are a film and a wall.

It would be hard to design a drug that acts on the reward center that would be more effective than nicotine.

boom selection/bsXtra

“The bootleg scene is … one of the most interesting things happening in music right now,” he said after listening to exactly part of exactly 2 different tracks. He didn’t, you’ll notice, indicate whether he particularly cared for the music itself.

http://pollinator.com/identify/whatsbuzzin.htm

The Language and Rhetoric of Race (Robert Jensen in The Mighty Organ)

White people who struggle against racism need not deny what they have achieved. In fact, it is by acknowledging those achievements that we open up the space to go further, both individually and collectively, in resisting the society’s racism and one day eliminating it. It doesn’t mean we are off the hook; it means we are on the hook even more publicly.

The balance in all this is tricky. The tendency among progressive whites toward self-congratulation, denial, and avoidance is well-known, especially to non-white people.

Central Booking - “a Fat Albert club house full of fun stuff to read, useful book-related information and a place for bibliophiles to meet, share, hang out and drink Tang (sort of)."

• Teaching On the Road


• re:read weblog


• Ghost World reviewed

I ignore the weapon speed factor, the effects of weapons vs. armor, generally don't pay attention to anything but gross violations of encumbrance, and never use psionics.