Category: interesting

Pins of perfection:

‘I’m perfect’ was Leonie Janssen’s graduation project at the Design Academy in Eindhoven last year.

Leonie has a fascination with the human body, especially with all the small imperfections and differences between our bodies, so… fat legs, thin waist, big breasts, broad hips, round bellies (anything sound vaguely familiar…)

…unlike many other designs that like us to believe there is something as a ‘perfect image’, Leonie wants us to see that there are many other possibilities than this so-called perfect image… so she translated her pictograms into products… the beauty of different proportions! Check out her website to read more about the I’m perfect concept

Link from bloesem.blog

Thomas Jefferson:

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights.

Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself.

Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

Many people are aware that Bush is “the most aggressively religious president in American History, but most remain without a clue to what this actually means.

New approaches may lead to advertising we won’t despise.

Scanning our brain for science or medicine is well known. Using EEG and MRI to determine how to advertise may be the tip of the iceberg as neurologists enter the business of branding.

At the vortexDNA blog, Kaila Colbin notices that these new approaches are “giving marketers scientific reasons why they have to respect their customers, adapt to the medium, and otherwise engage in behaviors that we all instinctively want anyway as consumers. In other words, there’s no suggestion that in order to get our attention marketing messages should be louder, more obnoxious, or more in-your-face.”

Understanding how the brain works is propelling marketers to refine advertising and brand building.

Millward Brown in “Engaging Consumer’s Brains” says the “effectiveness of marketing campaigns must be evaluated in relation to what we know about the workings of the brain“:

The brain is organized as a hierarchy of modules, in which discrete groups of neurons (the “modules”) are dedicated to processing different types of information. For example, one module might deal with visual stimuli, while another handles auditory input.
…
The brain can only assemble one representation at a time, and only three or four can exist in the workspace simultaneously.
…
If a brand lacks clear and distinct associations, neuroscience suggests that it will be unlikely to command a spot in the mental workspace when purchase decisions are made.

In the shipwreck of journalism, Rupert Murdoch wasn’t the only media mogul to clamor for war.

Bill Moyers:

If Rupert Murdoch were the Angel Gabriel, you still wouldn’t want him owning the sun, the moon, and the stars. That’s too much prime real estate for even the pure in heart.

But Rupert Murdoch is no saint; he is to propriety what the Marquis de Sade was to chastity.

…

Murdoch is just the predator of the hour.
The modern maestro of a financial marketplace ruled by money and moguls.

…

Instead of checking the excesses of private and public power,
these 21st century barons of the First Amendment revel in them;
the public be damned.

What people like depends on what they think other people like. – Duncan J Watts

We found her aside the road chopping firewood, and when we started talking to her she took us to her house. There we met her husband.

There was absolutely nothing in the house that they didn’t need to live their lives. When asked if they were lacking anything the man stood up, walked to the chabot in the back of the room, opened it and said: “We have everything we need.“

My sense of the holy, insofar as I have one, is bound up with the hope that someday, any millennium now, my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.

In such a society, communication would be domination-free, class and caste would be unknown, hierarchy would be a matter of temporary pragmatic convenience, and power would be entirely at the disposal of the free agreement of a literate and well-educated electorate. – Richard Rorty

The exile of a poet, is today a simple function of a relatively recent discovery; that whoever wields power is also able to control language, and not only with the prohibition of censorship, but also by changing the meaning of words. – Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Lecture [nod to wood s lot]

The Institute for Applied Autonomy held workshops in which participants create interactive maps of their city’s surveillance infrastructure.

Initially this meant focusing on the mechanics of surveillance, pointing out that in practice CCTV surveillance has had very little impact on actual crime and that it is subject to the biases of system designers and operators, which means it often gets used to ogle women and single out youth and minorities for scrutiny.

This activity asks a very different set of questions than simply “Does CCTV make you uncomfortable?”

Instead, it points to the lack of any kind of baseline data about surveillance.

Before we can have an intelligent conversation about CCTV surveillance, for example, it would be nice to know how many cameras are in operation, where they are, who owns them, etc. For the most part, this information simply doesn’t exist.

In most countries, cameras are put up by individual building owners and their data is increasingly managed by third-party private companies.

In effect, we have an emergent infrastructure of video surveillance that is growing on an ad-hoc basis, without any public discussion or oversight. Interview at WorldChanging

On the other hand, officers are trawling through hours of CCTV footage with unconfirmed reports suggesting they have a crystal clear image of the suspects who planted bombs in London.

Jamais Cascio is asking if we’re taking into account the possibility of failure.

If global warming isn’t a sufficiently compelling threat for you, substitute the existential problem of your choice: asteroid strike; zoonotic pandemic; biowarfare; molecular manufacturing-based warfare; unfriendly AI.

What does it mean to prepare for recovery?

• open-source disaster prep?
• updated survivalism?
• social resilience?

Will we wake up in a post-disaster society run by farmers and librarians?

A Canadian online newspaper has reviewed Michael Moore’s Sicko.

“Sicko points out this curious moment in American history. Namely, where’s the anger?

“Why aren’t people enraged by what has happened to their country? Where’s that good old American revolutionary spirit?

“Perhaps people who are sick, afraid, demoralized and in debt are far easier to govern than a healthy, perky, sassy populace.”

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. – Richard Feynman

Juries in criminal cases are getting it wrong – at least one case in eight.

“As a society can we be satisfied if 10 percent of convictions are incorrect?

Can we be satisfied knowing that innocent people go to jail for many years for wrongful convictions?”

Center on Wrongful Convictions

If you’re not colliding with thermal updrafts caused by overworked blow dryers, if you’re willing to take on the appearance of intuitive ectomorphs, if you’re tired of snotty galleries and overstuffed museums, then you will enjoy The Secrets of Inner Loserhood while browsing Christopher Locke’s reviews on Amazon.com. Less prolific than I expected, but fun.

By Executive Order of the President, one of the nation’s highest honors is to be named a Presidential Scholar.

During the ceremony this year in the East Room of the Whitehouse, the young recipients handed a signed handwritten letter to the President.

Stating that they have a responsibility to voice their convictions, the letter urged a halt to “violations of the human rights”:

“We do not want America to represent torture.

We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants.”

Deputy press secretary Dana Perino said later that the United States does not torture and that the USA values human rights. Associated Press

What will be done if a user of a central records database is malevolent?

In 1944, the Netherlands’ government-in-exile pressed the British to precision-bomb buildings containing personal records. Attacks were carried out on municipal archives in many locales across the Netherlands. Fire brigades took their time; watching a building as the records went up in flames.

Between 1941 and 1943, the Germans used details in records to isolate, deport and murder more than 150,000 Jews residing in Holland.

Records were also used to identify opposition and to round-up conscripts for forced labor in Germany.

What is a balanced view of identity and privacy and security?
Stephen Lewis is isolating the issues and posting about identity and the infrastructure of records.

Canadian journalists, reporters, editors and camera operators believe that owners’ “values and politics” and “financial bottom lines” affect the news and the editorial agendas of the country’s publications and broadcast stations.

Some results from the largest study ever conducted on the state of journalism in Canada:

• Seventy-seven percent said promotion steers news agenda.

• Sixty percent said owners do not value journalism over profit.
• Fifty-eight percent have been assigned stories to promote owners.
• Sixty-five percent said financial bottom line affects editorial agenda.
• Forty-five percent said advertisers influence news decisions.
• Forty-five percent said owners support little or no investigative journalism.
• Sixty-five percent reported chronic staff shortage.
• Seventy-nine percent of women report sexism & discrimination against women.
• Only 41 percent said owners encourage good journalism.
• Only 35 percent agreed that owners respect journalists.

Ninety percent believe things have been getting worse over the last decade.

[Story on news quality here]
The complete report of the study [pdf] at Communications, Energy and Paperworkers.

There are media policies that contribute to war.

Slate prints more of Christopher Hitchens.
He’s telling us about jihadist staging, the angry islamist, but he’s saying more about how pictures inflate:

I have actually seen some of these demonstrations, most recently in Islamabad, and all I would do if I were a news editor is ask my camera team to take several steps back from the shot.

We could then see a few dozen gesticulating men (very few women for some reason), their mustaches writhing as they scatter lighter fluid on a book or a flag or a hastily made effigy.

Around them, a two-deep encirclement of camera crews.

When the lights are turned off, the little gang disperses.

And you may have noticed that the camera is always steady and in close-up on the flames, which it wouldn’t be if there was a big, surging mob involved.

Our attitudes about war are significantly driven by pictures of an enemy. For that matter, we shape opinions about welfare viewing pictures of poor people in housing blocs, about wealth viewing rich people in Malibu, about politicians viewing pictures that are usually carefully staged.

Launching this summer, the Earthmine map system will offer much more precision than Google’s video street maps.

Rafe Needleman stumbled onto the Earthmine camera truck and posted specs at Webware plus a few of Earthmine’s upcoming features:

    • survey-quality 3D data
    • laser range-finding
    • object coordinates
    • perspective-corrected hi-res pics

For sale to government and corporations, Earthmine will provide panorama picture maps with accurate locations of light poles, trash cans, storefronts, trees, faces and license plates.

Parading as an outsider, Fred Thompson has been a hustler & lobbyist for decades.

He earned more than $750,000 from a firm that wanted to limit its liability from asbestos lawsuits, and helped to raise some $5 million for the legal fees of Vice-President Dick Cheney’s disgraced aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby. [link]

MAN, noun.
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he ought to be. – Ambrose Bierce

Tourists are vital to running America’s cities.

The number of overseas visitors to the U.S. has dropped 17% since its peak in 2000 — and 20% in the top 15 cities — costing more than $100 billion in lost visitor spending through 2005. In Los Angeles, tourism is expected to add $13 billion in direct cash to the economy this year, but from 2000 to 2005, the number of overseas travelers declined 27%.

Mayors are worried, nearly 75% saying that entry procedures and treatment by U.S. immigration and customs officials reinforce negative perceptions of the country. [LA Times]

The U.S. is likely to cede to China in the next couple of years its position as the third-most-visited international destination. France and Spain are the top international tourism destinations.

Factoid: American Tours International brings in 1 million tourists each year.

He said the Brits are more careful about dropping bombs on villages than the Americans.

US forces, he said, had a visible doctrine of using overwhelming force to keep troops out of harm’s way – with the result that, according to the BBC, coalition forces have now killed more civilians in Afghanistan this year than the militants have.

If that’s correct it is a truly terrifying statistic.

NATO is moving swiftly to try and limit the damage – apologizing….

From the Telegraph, with additional insight here.

The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.

We have people in this country who are richer than whole countries.
They run everything.

We have no Democratic Party.
It’s financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans.

As the world is ending, I’m always glad to be entertained for a few moments.
The best way to do that is with music. You should practice once a night.

[Quotes of Kurt Vonnegut]

“But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together,” Senator Obama said. “Faith started being used to drive us apart. Faith got hijacked.”