3/14 1:59

Happy Pi Day

Pi (now with approximately 3.14% more geek):
-------------------------------------------
00100100 00111111 01101010 10001000 10000101 10100011 00001000 11010011
00010011 00011001 10001010 00101110 00000011 01110000 01110011 01000100
10100100 00001001 00111000 00100010 00101001 10011111 00110001 11010000
00001000 00101110 11111010 10011000 11101100 01001110 01101100 10001001
01000101 00101000 00100001 11100110 00111000 11010000 00010011 01110111
10111110 01010100 01100110 11001111 00110100 11101001 00001100 01101100
11000000 10101100 00101001 10110111 11001001 01111100 01010000 11011101
00111111 10000100 11010101 10110101 10110101 01000111 00001001 00010111
10010010 00010110 11010101 11011001 10001001 01111001 11111011 00011011
11010001 00110001 00001011 10100110 10011000 11011111 10110101 10101100
00101111 11111101 01110010 11011011 11010000 00011010 11011111 10110111
10111000 11100001 10101111 11101101 01101010 00100110 01111110 10010110
10111010 01111100 10010000 01000101 11110001 00101100 01111111 10011001
00100100 10100001 10011001 01000111 10110011 10010001 01101100 11110111
00001000 00000001 11110010 11100010 10000101 10001110 11111100 00010110
01100011 01101001 00100000 11011000 01110001 01010111 01001110 01101001
10100100 01011000 11111110 10100011 11110100 10010011 00111101 01111110
( ... )

Borat

So, recently one of my friends on Facebook has been leaving a number of his Groups, presumably having out-grown the moment, and their news feeds are kind enough to tell me about this. (Point of fact, I like the news feeds). One such group that they left caught my interest, entitled "Boycott Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen!" I was interested because, having accidentally seen the movie (a story which involves, of course, a pretty girl influencing my judgment) I can say that I very strongly disliked the movie, but couldn't see anything in particular to spur some kind of a public movement like that. So I checked it out.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=415871&in_page_id=1770

After you read this you'll understand. Maybe we were able to see past all of the lies that Cohen got Americans to believe, but this is truly disturbing.

That's all the description the group had. To save you time reading, the article is from a British newspaper proclaiming that the town which was featured as Borat's home is angry about how they were portrayed in the movie and rising up to sue the Baron. I'll note here that the town he used wasn't depicted as anything; they were used to depict a Kazakh town in an insulting light, but that's not the same thing. Kazakhstan would be right to be angry, not this little town.

But that's tangential; it's not my point to talk about who should or should not sue Baron Cohen (I'd argue no one should). The rest of the group is just a big flamewar down their Wall, with people crying such buzzwords as Antisemitism (can a Jew himself be antisemitic? A question for another time), and Anti-American Propaganda, and the 'reasonable' voices saying things like "R U FUCKING RETARDED? DUDE SACHA BARON COHEN IS A JEW YOU DUMBASS..." Ah, how enlightened we can be.

And that is the point. I hated the movie Borat. It was crude, obscene, insulting on almost every level I can imagine. But it was true. People are like that, Americans are like that. Baron Cohen has admitted that he used Borat (in this movie and elsewhere) to draw out the inherent biases that people generally hide in polite company. I can appreciate and almost respect Borat for the social commentary it presents, a fact which is tinged slightly by the fact that, I imagine, most people who watch the movie will never realize it. I fear that most of America is going to sit down and watch the movie and see it at face value. And in all likelihood, they're going to laugh at the great comedy they're presented with.

I think that bit is probably the true genius of Borat; it's social commentary doesn't end with the film. Every theatre crowd that goes to see it (or college dorm that rents it, etc) and laughs themselves to tears is one more notch on the one, one more bit of proof that, essentially, we are everything Cohen has made us out to be.

You have to be pretty low to think most of that movie's funny.

(no subject)

A friend recently made a post touching on how we as a culture socialize in great part through electronic media, in lieu of socializing via physical proximity. And that somehow there's a great something missing in these digital socializations. he ended with the quote "I miss everybody. Even when they're right there. " I know the feeling. if I get some time to read though the article he linked to and process some of my own thoughts, I might expand on this later.

Court: The dying can be charged for using marijuana

Wait. What?

The Supreme Court ruled against Raich two years ago, saying that medical marijuana users and their suppliers could be prosecuted for breaching federal drug laws even if they lived in a state such as California where medical pot is legal.

Article Here

Augmented Solidiers: Cyborgs, MOM, Juicers

Be All More Than You Can Be
This is some interesting stuff on DARPA's projects to augment soldiers biologically and mechanically. Very interesting stuff.

The Glove: Vinh Cao, their squat, barrel-chested lab technician, used to do almost 100 pull-ups every time he worked out. Then one day he cooled himself off between sets with an early prototype. The next round of pull-ups — his 11th — was as strong as his first. Within six weeks, Cao was doing 180 pull-ups a session. Six weeks after that, he went from 180 to more than 600. Soon, Stanford’s football trainers asked to borrow a few Gloves...

I’ve started shivering again — all across my legs and chest, muscles pulse to a manic rhythm. And then I start having tremors. My thighs jackknife to my chest, unbidden. I moan, and darkness closes in from the edges of my vision.

Then, just like on the treadmill, Grahn takes my wrist. He slips each of my hands into a modified Glove prototype. This time, the metal hemispheres inside are hot to the touch — 113 degrees. After two minutes, I can think again. The tent comes back into focus. “You can stay this way indefinitely now. You’re at a thermal equilibrium; the heat going into these two hands is equivalent to what’s going out of the rest of you,” Grahn says. “Now you’re uncomfortable again — merely uncomfortable. That’s a huge difference when you’re talking about survival.” The water is still bitter, of course. But now I can take it.

Vocal Bias?

So, a friend of mine just observed that she has a strong bias toward female vocals in music: most of her music features female vocalists and in genres she's not a fan of (she notes Country) she's more forgiving of female vocals. She does like some male vocals, but notes they're a distinct minority.

I've never thought about it, but it occurs to me that I'm just the opposite. Most of the artists I like, particularly the ones I consider my favorites (VNV Nation, Assemblage 23, Queensryche, Savatage) have male vocals. Some artists I like feature female back-ups, but none of my favorites. In genres I'm not a particular fan of, I think it's split fairly evenly between male and female vocals, though I think there's a slight bias toward male vocals.

So, now I'm curious: is there any pattern to this?

(After getting so responses, it occurs to me that I should have had "I am mostly attracted to: Men, Women, No One, Everyone Equally" instead of using labels like Straight, Gay, Bi, or the ever-nebulous Other. Ah well, I'll try to keep that in mind next time I'm pigeon-holing sexuality.)

[Poll #946976]