++ Pornolize Zota ++
porn phys v20
L33T-SP34K
links to other language translatons at web zen
[via boing boing]
Pornolize
++ Pornolize Zota ++
Month: May 2003
++ Pornolize Zota ++
Automat
Remember the Cyclone filter in Kai’s Power Tools ?
(You know, KPT 2.1? The version with the fractal generator?)
Well anyway, the cyclone filter would randomly spin the all the values of the color channels in real time — 80 MHz of processor never looked so good! To actually employ the filter on an image, you had to click on one particular moment in the random rotation of psychedelic color and hope for the best. And then the computer would crash.
God damn those were heady days! Cause if you clicked at the exact moment that the perfect combination of HSB values was on oozing across the screen, and your computer didn’t crash…
I – P – O, mutherfucker.
Strange Banana will spit out random CSS web designs for you with the same automated glee, but without the ravey fractal trip-out. Sorry.
If you’d rather swipe some nice human-crafted CSS layouts, Open Source Web Design is happy to lend a hand to all the hard working sisters and brothers on the street.
And if you want to re/discover your Calvinist work ethic Simon Willison walks through stylesheets in a way that actually makes sense and is easy to follow.
Them
Dianne Ravitch’s book “The Language Police” has been getting a lot of justified attention. It documents the banning of words and ideas from textbooks, describing the ideological battleground of public schools. But every single article and review of this book that I’ve seen tends to follow the same structure: an outrageous list of banned words, sneers and howls that classic works of literature cannot even be mentioned by name, curses at the manipulative shackles placed on young minds…
And only towards the end — if at all — does somebody mention who the language police are, the ones actually doing this banning of words. This is the very last paragraph of a Reuters review at CNN:
Ravitch said that textbook publishing is controlled by four main publishers and they aim to sell texts state by state, thus forcing them to dumb down the books and make the language as inoffensive as possible. “They don’t want controversy and they don’t want people screaming,” she said.
So the “they” responsible for the actuall banning of words is much worse than pressure groups. The power of three large states (Florida, Texas and California) is one major factor. But the ones actually doing this are a small group of media corporations who have managed to corner the textbook market and who are choosing to squirt pabulum at children in order to maintain that control. The deeper problem is a near total oligopoly, a massive concentration in media ownership.
The CNN article doesn’t name the four publishers Ravitch mentions. In fact, no review of her book seems to name them. Here’s a partial breakdown of the Big Four companies who own 70% of the textbook market:
McGraw-Hill
Also owns: Standard & Poor’s financial services (including the S&P 500), BusinessWeek, McGraw-Hill Construction, Platts energy information, four ABC affiliates.
Harcourt
Acquired by Reed Elsevier in 2001
Includes the textbook imprint Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Also owns: Lexis-Nexis, Variety, Publisher’s Weekly.
Harcourt Educational Measurement owns the Stanford Achievement Test: “the most widely used norm reference test in the US taken by over 15 million students annually.”
Houghton-Mifflin
Acquired from Vivendi by an investment group in 2002.
Includes textbook imprint McDougal Littell.
Riverside Publishing owns several assessment tests including the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (aka: “IQ” test)
Pearson
Includes textbook imprints Scott Foresman and Prentice-Hall
Also owns: Penguin Group (including Viking, Dutton, Berkeley, etc etc), Financial Times (including FT.com), 22% share of RTL Group – largest radio and TV broadcaster in Europe. Person Government Solutions performs an array of information related functions for local, state and federal government.
Together, these four companies not only control the textbook industry, they also control most academic assessment, which textbooks are increasingly geared towards. They also happen to control a great deal of the information about the publishing business itself. Smart diverse companies specializing in the manipulation and packaging of information. When they censor a textbook, they know exactly what they’re doing.
Things look pretty grim for anyone wanting to return sanity to this “free” market. Probably the only thing that could make it even worse is another massive wave of media consolidation. (For example, News Corp and AOLTimeWarner already have large academic book divisions…)
more
Wall Street Journal article from Feb 2002 also discusses the textbook oligopoly. They say there’s only three big companies… Dag.
Who Owns What by the Columbia Journalism Review
Hypocrisy Burger
A ranting article by Sydney Smith at TechCentralStation suggests that people should quit complaining about the cheap, fatty, sugar-filled food at places like McDonalds — it’s good for you! As long as you also go to a nice gym and get some exercise.
[T]he data suggest that clamoring at corporations isn’t likely to make much of a dent in the obesity epidemic. Which leaves the question of who will be the next target of the crusaders when the assault on restaurants fails.
Just coincidentally, one of the ad bars on above this article’s headline was for… McDonald’s.
This makes for the lovely image you see above, with a young buff aryan lad on a weight machine framed by a dripping cheeseburger. See how the grease makes his muscles look more sexy? And if you get fries with your expensive gym membership, then capitalism wins! Supersize it for America.
To empirically prove his point about the laziness of fat people, Smith cites a study in an MSNBC article suggesting that kids today are more overweight even though they eat roughly the same number of calories as they did in the past. One conclusion is that teenagers are gaining weight primarily due to a lack of exercise, but for some reason this study does not look at what kind of food their calories come from. Just coincidentally, “the study was funded by an unrestricted grant from the National Soft Drink Association.”
Smith also cites a study of two groups of Pima Indians, one in “a remote, mountainous area of Northwest Mexico,” and one in an area near Phoenix, Arizona. In this study, “questionnaires revealed more time spent on occupational activities among Mexican Pima compared with USA Pima.” One conclusion is that physical activity plays a large role in weight, but for some reason this study also doesn’t examine the actual diet of the two communities, one in remote rural mountains, and one in the American suburbs. Just coincidentally, Phoenix was the location of the first McDonald’s franchise.
[The link to Smith's article came from Glenn Reynolds, the New York Times of Blogs, who coincidentally also writes for Tech Central Station.]
So let’s just say that increasing obesity has nothing whatsoever to do with Bread for the World Institute helps them out a little:
Recent work from Cornell University and the University of California at Davis suggest that obesity among poor women may be linked to their habit of periodically going without food so that their children can eat.
Others factors also increase poor people’s risk of obesity. Many low-income Americans more likely are consuming foods low in nutritional quality and high in calories, fats and sugars because these are the cheapest foods. Healthier foods such as meat, fish, fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains often are more expensive in low-income neighborhoods than alternative junk food. Cash-strapped families increasingly rely on fast food chains, which promote “value” meals, such as oversized burgers, extra-large servings of fries and buckets of soda.
Moreover, poor neighborhoods often lack large grocery stores that typically offer the lowest prices and greatest range of brands, package sizes and quality choices, and farmers markets that sell locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. Transportation to these large grocery stores and farmers markets also may be unavailable or expensive. Consequently, many mothers in low-income neighborhoods depend on their corner convenience stores — stocked with mostly high-cost processed, pre-packaged foods — to feed their families. Exacerbating this problem, poor families, especially those living in urban areas, often do not have safe areas for physical activity: Burning calories or exercising is half of the weight control solution.
In an effort to disgust rational observers into silence, Smith and Reynolds conclude that these families should take the money and time which they would have devoted to feeding their children, and instead pay a fee at a gym.
Willful idiocy or finger lickin’ bloodthirst? Who cares! Wireless internet, dude!
Hey, didja know there’s something called a McSchool sandwich? Just don’t complain about it if you’re a student…
More
The Wall Street Journal has all the inside dirt on Ronald:
McDonald’s conducts extensive background checks on Ronald candidates, but that hasn’t always prevented mishaps. One former Ronald is a vegetarian who has since joined forces with animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to chide the chain. “I feel badly about what I’ve done with young people,” says Geoffrey Giuliano, who played Ronald in Canada in the early 1980s. “I was the happy face on something that was horrendous.”
Joe Maggard, another former Ronald, pleaded guilty in 1998 to a charge of carrying a concealed weapon in New Hanover County, N.C., and the next year was convicted in county court of making harassing phone calls posing as a Ronald. The judge ordered him to take anger-management classes. “I’m one of the bad-boy Ronalds,” says Mr. Maggard, an actor who portrayed Ronald in the mid-’90s. “Am I a bad guy? No, I’m not a bad guy. Did Ronald get in a little trouble down there? Yes.”
This kid had a run in with Ronald on a bad day.
For bureaucratic reasons
Billmon has a long list of Bush regime quotes about weapons of mass destruction which follows a blazing arc from this:
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
George Bush
March 17, 2003
to this:
For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.
Paul Wolfowitz
May 28, 2003
Fox News on Jessica Lynch
An AP story on Fox News (Fox News?) largely confirms the BBC report (Fox News??) that the “hut! hut! hut!” and random gunfire and door kicking in the “dramatic rescue” of Jessica Lynch was indeed more dramatic than rescue.
First there was that whole Americans-shooting-the-ambulance when the Iraqis tried to give Lynch back. Slapstick.
Twelve hours after all Iraqi troops had pulled out of town, the commandos arrived. Tthe deputy director of the hospital had just put his son to bed at 11:45pm:
Then he heard loud voices: “Go! Go! Go!”
The commandos burst in.
Al-Jabbar said the soldiers declined an offer of the hospital’s master key so they wouldn’t have to break down the doors.
“They pointed the gun at us for two hours,” he said. “Their manner was very rude. They even handcuffed the director of the hospital. … Not a single shot was fired at them. They shot at doors — all doors. They broke them, kicked them open.”
Al-Hazbar said he had expected a raid but was surprised by its intensity. Now that there was no Iraqi military around, why so much force? He said he and his family found themselves surrounded by about 20 American soldiers firing their guns.
“They were shooting indiscriminately, everywhere, at windows, between our legs, on the floor. We were terrified,” al-Hazbar said.
A first-person account by the rescuee? Unnamed sources report that Jessica Lynch now resides in blissful oblivion within a sealed vat of national security juice:
U.S. officials have said Lynch, who is recovering in a Washington hospital, doesn’t remember anything about her capture, and she has not yet commented publicly about her time in Iraq
Ah yes, good old amnesia. Just like Fred Flintstone.
[oh hey, MSNBC too.]
update:
Lynch’s parents officially join her in the fuzzy haze of the security juice.
PALESTINE, W.Va. – American POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s parents said Thursday they are not permitted to discuss details of their daughter’s capture and rescue in Iraq.
Fantastic Fish
Hipublicans
In this gassy article at the New York Times Magazine, a cadre of young white wealthy conservatives at an ivy league school get some major press for using the word “diversity” and wearing t-shirts.
When the Bucknell conservatives assemble for their weekly meetings, they look like a typical, if all-white, sampling of American undergraduates, which is to say, there are plenty of ragged T-shirts, backward baseball caps and frayed jeans in the room. Some club members even let their freak flag fly a little. Aaron Hanlon, who attends the school on a grant, recently cut his hair into ragged spikes and dyed it blond. With his skeletal runner’s frame and hawklike nose, he could pass as the elegantly smack-addled lead guitarist in a neometal band instead of the hard-right conservative that he is. Corey Langer is a club member just out of his freshman year who dresses in full-goth regalia, complete with ankle-length black overcoat, vintage Ozzy T-shirt, pentagram necklace and an array of ”finger armor” that he bought at a ”psycho-hippie shop” near his hometown of Higganum, Conn.
So hip, they even have a pet goth. With finger armor.
Behold the freak flag of cutting-edge young conservative culture:
here at a Feb 2003 “Happy Hour” of the Heritage Foundation Young Leadership Network.
and here at their October 2002 meet and greet with Lucianne Goldberg’s kid.
and here are the staff photos of the Collegiate Network of conservative college journalists
and here is a discussion of just how embarrassing it really is at ludic log [via Tom Tomorrow]
also:
free republic pirated the entire article from the times. One insightful comment: “Those photos are terrible. They look like a bunch of Nazis.”
tactical research
Biomatic.org has suggestions for tactical.virii.
They also have whitemail for easily sending spoofed email.
Victory
In the last two days, 8 American soldiers killed, 24 injured.
[Daily Kos].
The Asia Times reports on CIA intelligence that Saddam has formed a leadership in hiding and they’re preparing an Iraqi intafada. There’s supposedly an official start date: July 27.
[Agonist]
pure grammar
“The supernatural nature of humanity can be easily demonstrated with empirical evidence.”
Making Light locates the abstract blueprint of an Online Argument in the titles of a comments thread on kuro5hin:
No by CaptainSuperBoy
Really? by tkatchev
You’re stupid. by Kax
I may be stupid. by tkatchev
Are you sure? by Kax
Quite. by tkatchev
contradiction in terms. by delmoi
No. by tkatchev&ct…
Bomb Ira…
The Bush administration Ira Glass remains inspiringly philosophical about his fate.
Speculation also runs rampant that “Sedaris” might sound similar enough to “Saudis” to convince war-starved Americans to back a large-scale invasion of France. Or almost anywhere else.
Interpellation
Magic
A right wing freak calls Michael Moore fat. Obviously there’s nothing new or original there.
But what is fascinating about this essay at eject! eject! eject! is it’s long explanation of the Big Lie as a case of magical irrationality.
The author Bill Whittle uses an example by Carl Sagan describing an invisible dragon that someone claims is in their garage, but it can’t be physically detected in any way. If that’s the case, how exactly is it a dragon? He repeats Sagan’s point about illogical thinking regarding things that cannot be detected in any way, but which some people simply choose to believe exist.
When a person wants to believe something, no amount of skeptical questioning, logical contradictions or contrary evidence will move them. Couple that with the example of the dragon – the constant moving of the goalposts of proof and verification, and you have the basis for modern magical thinking. And if UFO’s, Loch Ness Monsters and Bermuda Triangles can draw so many believers, how many more can we recruit with more nuanced sleight of hand?
And yet he still brings up Iraq.
When this essay was written a week ago, the first American dragon inspection team was already being pulled out of Iraq and the entire justification for war was proven a lie. The wonder of this ideological mode is that a point of utter logical disjunction becomes the jumping off point for a discussion of… misdirection!
Now, ask any professional magician how they pull off their illusions and every last one will tell you it’s all about misdirection. Sadly, those boring, insensitive, dead-white-male laws of physics don’t allow for quarters to disappear into thin air. So to make someone believe that precisely this has happened, we need to physically make that coin go someplace where it is not expected. And the way to do that is to make everyone look somewhere else for a moment.
Responding to a massive lie by discussing techniques of misdirection. The way that an utter lack of shame passes for valid argument in the special universe of right wing machismo — it really is magical.
Speaking of playing “hide the quarter,” the trillion dollar tax cuts a year and a half ago have already added millions of jobs!
No. Wait…
The next set of tax cuts will now add millions of jobs!
No.
Posted by zota at 01:38 AM
James Cameron – the truth
Is there a web site brave enough to expose the sinister mind control technologies hidden in Titanic?
Yes, my friend. Yes there is.
Namely, the James Cameron Conspiracy Theory site. Be warned: for sinister reasons, this page has a looping MIDI of “Riders on the Storm.”
Into this world we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm
What does it mean? Think about it:
Cameron’s first film was the 1978 short XenoGenesis (“alien birth”). This was followed by Aliens, Terminator, Strange Days, Point Break…
“Surfing” with Kenau Reves and Patrick Swayze?
If you still don’t get it, you must not be a Master Mason like James Cameron.
There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin’ like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet memory will die
Killer on the road, yeah
[via bumperactive's got iraq?]
Open Source Music
Negativland is leading a brand new discussion at Creative Commons on a licensing option for sampling.
OpenSound also looks interesting.
Opsound is a record label using an open source, copyleft model, an experiment in practical gift economics, a laboratory for new ways of releasing music.
In its first phase of operation, Opsound is gathering material for an open sound pool which will be drawn on for the creation of a series of online and real-world microlabels.
It’s a nice idea (CC interview with founder Sal Randolph). But unfortunately the open pool of audio can’t actually host any of the audio files, so there’s already some geocities “file not found” links. Is a persistent media archive of open source and open submission material possible? (MP3.com has started charging. Submisson to IUMA doesn’t seem to be working.) Can this kind of archive only be maintained through the fickle p2p labyrinth or out-of-pocket bandwidth expense?
Creamaster 3
On Thursday evening, I saw Matthew Barney’s Creamaster 3.
On Friday evening, I stood very still for a few minutes, gazing at the pendulous keys swaying in the ignition of the locked car, and then looking up to the setting sun dipping even with the red “adobe” tiles of the suburban homes. I didn’t have the usual feeling of sudden dread or regret — it would just be a matter of time. A few hours at worst. An opportunity to appreciate the aesthetics and the physicality of trash lying around the parking lot, trash which could be ingeniously put to use as tools.
The car had been stolen a few months ago. It looks as if a large screwdriver had been jammed into the driver’s side lock and twisted. Maybe the thief didn’t have a slim jim, or maybe just wanted to display brutal mastery over the idea of access. I hadn’t fixed the lock after the car was recovered, so it remained scared and hanging slightly out of the door. I assumed I’d be able to open it with a pair of tweezers and popsicle stick, or If need be, a screwdriver and a hard twist.
Scanning the nearby asphalt, I quickly found an old coat hanger lying on top of the nearest wad of landscaping, already bent straight by one of my ancestors trying to manufacture an access tool. Its ends were rusty and fatigued, but most of it had been protected by a white plastic sheath where the metal remained strong and pliant. The inside door locks are gray phallic lozenges with no lip or head to lasso in the ancient manner. But their ribbed finger-grip zones looked ripe for raking with the jagged tip of a well-bent wire. Just a matter of time.
First, the broken door lock.
A twig. A twist tie. A bit of plastic spoon. The transparent blue flap from a thin box of breath strips. A cotter pin. The metal clip ripped from the cap of a nice ball point pen. Apparently the lock was not quite so broken.
Then, the hanger on the inside lock. Bend down to go in, bend up to go out…
It was an hour and a half before I noticed the first blister on my thumb had broken and another long one had welled up beneath the blackened skin. The rubber door seal on was torn and dangling. The ribbed grips on the plastic lock were delicate and coy, totally unwilling to accept the advances of the rusty hook, especially at such an oblique spiral.
A yellow hummer drove up and parked, crookedly. A tiny tiny bald man got out. He stood eye-level with his hood.
A sporty black BMW drove up and parked, crookedly. A portly middle aged man with fluffed hair got out. His belly stood level with his hood.
I was the only person visibly loitering within the mile-long line of sight afforded by the open blacktop. Although no one looked in my direction, everyone near me assiduously set and un-set their car alarms when going in and out of the stores. Bwoop-boop! Boop-Bep!
A black jaguar pulled up, started to park straight, then gave the wheel a twist at the last second to angle crookedly in the parking space. I didn’t look to see who got out. Beboo-Woop!
The sun was down and I could feel my eyes bugging out in their dry sockets. Time to go to the office supply store and get some real tools.
Intermission
Slice of “New York Style” pizza and a large lemonade with “0% Juice.”
Part 2
They came in a single leatherette zipper day-runner pouch: wire strippers, a plastic syringe with a wire claw inside, a multi-angular ratchet driver, a bright yellow anti-static bracelet with snap-on lead wire and alligator clip, a pair of reverse-force tweezers, a pair of needle-nose pliers. And a flat head screwdriver.
I tried the outside lock again, this time with a brand new tiny flashlight in my teeth. After a few minutes it became clear that the person who stole my car did not use a flat head screwdriver. Or a piece of rusty coat hanger. Or a pair of tweezers. Or a popsicle stick.
Surrendering, I carried my new leatherette tool satchel to the first pay phone. It had no dial tone, but it had a phone book. Four tow company numbers.
I carried my new leatherette tool satchel to the second pay phone inside the office supply store. It also had no dial tone. “That phone don’t work,” said the employee as I walked away. “The one outside works.”
I carried my new leatherette tool satchel to the third pay phone outside the store. It had a dial tone. But it did not take quarters. It did take dimes. Using all my dimes, I called a tow company. Answering machine. No more dimes. I tried an 800 number: no answer. I tried my phone card: expired. I tried to put quarters in the phone as fast as I could to see if it might catch one, but they fell steadily into the return slot like a lazy jackpot.
I carried my new leatherette tool satchel to the forth pay phone. Someone was using it to chat. As I waited, I wondered, how long can the process of repetition and variation reasonably go on?
The fourth pay phone buzzed loudly, but it took quarters. Called. Connected.
The operator at the tow company was incredulous. Put me on hold. Asked twice in disbelief for my non-existent cell number. While I waited on hold a second time, I wondered, how long can the process of repetition and variation reasonably go on? The buzzing grew louder as I was transfered abruptly to a tow truck driver. He asked every question again. He was even more incredulous. He asked everything twice. Then again for my cell number. But only asked for my credit card number once. I was suddenly aware that I had no idea who I was speaking to over a buzzing pay phone.
The tow truck arrived after a delay twice as long as he said, but only one and a half times as long as I expected. The driver happily told me that he wasn’t planning to show up at all since he wrote down the wrong credit card number. But since he had another call in the area he figured, what the hell.
It took a total of 45 seconds to open the car with a slim jim, including time spent walking to the tow truck and back. It took about ten minutes to drive to an ATM and pay the man. Pay the man a lot.
Total running time clocks in at about three hours.
Matthew Barney owes much of his symbolic use of continuity and taboo-breaking imagery to the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. In that art house classic, Johnny Castle locks his keys in his car, so he simply finds a nearby post and smashes open one of his windows.
It is powerful evidence of Matthew Barney’s artistic triumph that I did not resort to the tactics of his predecessor, Patrick Swayze. Instead, I chose Barney’s method of a tortuous and cryptic circularity, a painful avoidance of the straight line as the tracework of demons. Although it’s impossible to say just how much effect high art has on the “real world,” all I know is that I still have a back window.
Thumb’s up, Mr. Barney.
- More
la weekly review
film threat review
cars and feng shui
“thumb up your butt” [.wav]
Roll d12 against Space Rock
1997
If you remember 1997, then you weren’t really there.
Not to worry — the old “Razorfish Sub Network” continues to provide helpful evidence: at Bunko.com, you can still play the eXcellerator, “a game of profits and loss.” Shoot profitable numbers from your spreadsheet sector. Blow away the relentlessly marching losses to keep from going bankrupt. Literally seconds of almost ironic fun!
Then put on a Fiona Apple CD single and surf over to webmonkey to catch up on the browser wars to and the latest Nescape 4 beta features (L4y3rZ 0Wn Y0u!)
Maybe it is possible for a decade to escape the accursed black hole of nostalgia…
Cowards
From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
One day before Democrats ended their boycott of the Texas House last week, the Texas Department of Public Safety ordered the destruction of all records and photos gathered in the search for them, documents obtained Tuesday show.
A one-sentence order sent by e-mail on the morning of May 14 was apparently carried out, a DPS spokesman said Tuesday. The revelation comes as federal authorities are investigating how a division of the federal Homeland Security Department was dragged into the hunt for the missing Democrats — at the request of the state police agency.
