και ὁ λογος ἠν προς τον θεον

A while back, I found out about this strangely compelling collection of women's mug shots, from the World War II era, through Lauren at feministe (2006-01-14):

Several years ago, I purchased a large set of female mug shots from the 1940s. These are a few examples. Each image has its own brown paper envelope that gives the woman's name, race, alias, and reason for arrest which is in code. *Most likely, the majority were arrested for prostitution.

*The original owner told me that the majority of arrests were for solicitation. Most of the envelopes have the exact same codes with the exception of a few. I am assuming that the original owner knew what the codes meant although I have not been able to decipher them.

These are, of course, mostly women who should never have been hassled by the bully-boys of the State; maybe what's interesting is seeing how each of them is dealing with the combination of physical threats, absurdity, and bureaucratic boredom that they are being forced to endure. You should go see them all, but the main reason I mention it is to point out the best one of the lot. Violet wins at mug shots.

On the other hand, I am sure as hell not a paleo-libertarian either. I expect that I got that as #3 because one of the sets of questions that could tag "left-libertarians" accurately--taking an anti-war position with a high level of importance--also tends to tag "paleo-libertarians" pretty well. Anyway, please note the following:

• My #1 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, Ideology Selector, is Left-libertarian

• My #2 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, Ideology Selector, is Libertarian

• My #3 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, Ideology Selector, is Paleo-libertarian

• My #4 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, Ideology Selector is Radical

• My #5 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, Ideology Selector, is Paleoconservative

• My #6 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, Ideology Selector, is Liberal

Enjoy. (Thanks, Anthony Gregory.)

• Not enough love, kindness, and understanding.


• Too much conformity, not enough individuality.


• Too many people turning away from moral values

Anti-abortion ideologues beware: I'm promoting objective, factual information on:

• Roe v. Wade
• abortion

You can too. Join me in Bombing for Choice.

Update 2005-02-02 4:07pm: Broken link back to the action information page fixed!

I am Jean-Luc Picard. Which Fantasy/SciFi Character are you? Engage.

There are some words which I have known since I was a schoolboy. "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." These words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie -- as a wisdom, and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged.

There are some good, interesting characters to choose from. But where are Paul Atreides, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, Lady Jessica, Dr. Susan Calvin, Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin? Just because not all of them made it into the movies doesn't mean that they aren't of interest. Certainly of more interest than useless Darth Maul.

Where could you find something so tomorrow except in the island home of all things hyper-modern?

A new breed of wearable robotic vehicles that envelop drivers are being developed by Japanese car giant Toyota. A new breed of wearable robotic vehicles that envelop drivers are being developed by Japanese car giant Toyota.

The company's vision for the single passenger in the 21st Century involves the driver cruising by in a four-wheeled leaf-like device or strolling along encased in an egg-shaped cocoon that walks upright on two feet.

Both these prototypes will be demonstrated, along with other concept vehicles and helper robots, at the Toyota stand at the Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan, in March 2005.

The models are being positioned as so-called personal mobility devices, which have few limits.

The open leaf-like "i-unit" vehicle is the latest version of the concept which the company introduced last year.

Built using environmentally friendly plant-based materials, the single passenger unit is equipped with intelligent transport system technologies that allow for safe autopilot driving in specially equipped lanes.

The model allows the user to make tight on-the-spot turns, move upright amongst other people at low speeds and can be easily switched into a reclining position at higher speeds.

Body colours can be customized to suit individual preferences and a personal recognition system offers both information and music.

I give in! It's a fun idea that I got from Roxanne. (Idea, not meme. Ideas rule, memes drool.)

Here's how it works: (1) Fire up your music device. (2) Set to random play. (3) List the first ten songs. I wrote a Perl script that plays random files from my MP3 store on my Linux file server (which is in the living room and has better speakers than my laptop); I used PuTTY on my laptop to create an SSH connection over the network and start the jukebox script from my couch. This is how I procrastinate on grad school applications.

Here's the songs:

1. Erin McKeown - Daisy and Prudence
2. Laziest Men on Mars - All Your Base Are Belong to Us
3. Tenacious D - Dio
4. Diana Krall - I've Got You Under My Skin (Live in Paris)
5. Busta Rhymes - Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See
6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles (theme)
7. The Fellowship of the Ring score - A Knife in the Dark
8. Forest for the Trees - Stream
9. The Beatles - Ask Me Why
10. Ibrahim Ferrer - Como Fué

The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time

Ayn Rand's A Selfish Christmas (1951)

In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts -- and therefore Christmas -- possible. Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as "anti-life."

...

Muppet Christmas with Zbigniew Brzezinski (1978)

A year before their rather more successful Christmas pairing with John Denver, the Muppets joined Carter Administration National Security Advisor Brezezinski for an evening of fun, song, and anticommunist rhetoric. While those who remember the show recall the pairing of Brzezinki and Miss Piggy for a duet of "Winter Wonderland" as winsomely enchanting, the scenes where the NSA head explains the true meaning of Christmas to an assemblage of Muppets dressed as Afghan mujahideen was incongruous and disturbing even then. Washington rumor, unsupported by any Carter administration member, suggests that President Carter had this Christmas special on a repeating loop while he drafted his infamous "Malaise" speech.

I've spent enough time watching beautiful Miyazaki movies away from any anime fanboys to sometimes forget why it is that I think the whole anime/manga fan-cult in the U.S. can get really gross and creepy. And then I get a lovely little reminder of why:

Still, the Xbox has its supporters -- and by and large, they're fans of the Dead or Alive games that feature a bevy of barely legal, high-resolution digital girls who fight in skimpy outfits and play volleyball in skimpier ones. The DOA games are the only two Xbox titles to break 100,000 units sold in Japan.

So, to celebrate the Japanese release of Dead or Alive Online next month, Microsoft is rolling out a special edition Xbox set with an extra-special bonus -- a dakimakura, or "hugging pillow," that features a life-size, front-and-back print of teenage character Kasumi in a skimpy bikini.

These character-print dakimakura came into existence in the late '90s as a way for animé fans to get up close and personal with their cartoon sweethearts. "They were originally very popular among fans of doujinshi (manga fanzines)," said Kunio Muto, a technology reporter for the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, "but over the past couple of years they have secured a spot in the otaku (obsessed fan) market."

And it only gets worse from there. Dude, gross.

You Are the Stuffing

You're complicated and complex, yet all your pieces fit together. People miss you if you're gone - but they're not sure why.

(Thanks to Pinko Feminist Hellcat 2004/11/24.)

How true it is...

Nov. 18 - Next week, millions of college students and young professionals will head home for the Thanksgiving holidays. We'll sit with our families in warm, candle-lit dining rooms eating stuffed turkey, reminiscing over old photographs, preparing holiday shopping lists and … Please. Let's be frank. We are going home to fix our parents' computers.

Forget the generational tags you've already heard, like Gen X and Gen Y. We are the Tech-Support Generation. Our job is to troubleshoot the complex but imperfect technology that befuddle mom and dad, veterans of the rotary phone, the record player and the black-and-white cabinet television set. Next week, on our annual pilgrimage home, we'll turn our Web-trained minds and joystick-conditioned fingers to the task of rescuing our parents from bleeding-edge technology on the blink.

On the other hand, keep in mind that it's not your parents' fault. It's the crappy technology's fault. There's an excellent bit on the self-abasement and perverse deference that we are expected to show towards computers:

For our parents, the lingo is foreign and indecipherable. IP address? Why should they even have to know what that means? The worst part is that they know it should and can work—if they can just crack the alien code. When they can't get it to work, they make preposterous compromises they never would accept with a new car or household appliance. Bringing the laptop home but not using it; or using dial-up while the broadband wireless network router sits unused in the office for six months—until the kids come home. I recently overheard one student saying to another on a college campus: I told my parents I am coming home this Thanksgiving to spend time with them, not to fix their printer.

But the real problem really is that the software just sucks.

Technology execs used to spend a lot of time beating the battle-drum of simplicity. Products had to be easier to use and more elegantly designed, they argued. You hear less of that now, but certainly not because they achieved those lofty goals. Too often, today’s slick user interfaces appear to be nothing more than curtains hiding the wizard. Hit the wrong key, and you still get those incomprehensible error messages.

For further reading: When Good Interfaces Go Crufty.