Month: March 2011

Mike Albo reports on the performers who fall short:

The porn industry is many things. Subtle is not one of them. So when Porn Inc. went searching for a job title for people like Stephen Hill, the choice was "mope." It's based on the off-camera life of these fringe actors, hangers-on who mope around the studios hoping for a bit role, which if they're lucky might bring them $50 plus food — and the chance to have sex with a real, live woman.

The title "Porn Machete Murder" tells you where it's headed.

Design Boom recounts how Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen, and Einar Sneve Martinussen charted the Internet with LEDs:

Through time-lapse photography and three weeks in the Grünerløkka area of Oslo, Norway, the pulsing lights create a physical representation of how different types of networks behave in their specific environments. The digital qualities we think of as network strength, consistency, and reach are shown as material manifestations reflecting the homes, businesses, and parks that the network is set up to serve.

An old study had researchers proposition strangers. All of the women declined while many of the men accepted. Thomas Macaulay Millar reads a new study that claims “when women are presented with proposers who are equivalent in terms of safety and sexual prowess, they will be equally likely as men to engage in casual sex":

[Men are] perceived terribly by women, including but not only our potential sex partners.  This perception may be entirely based not on something we’ve done but things other men have done.  On my account, though, it is based as much on the social structures we participate in as men, and the ways they operate in the culture.  On my account, as long as there is a lot of rape and not a lot of remedy, as long as there is slut-shaming and double-standards, as long as the denial of the technologies women need to mitigate the risks of unintended pregnancy and disease, then they’re going to look askance at us, and they’re going to act like they have more risk and less to gain from sex with us, because in fact they do. 

Which reminds me: sometimes, it's great to be gay.

 A reader writes:

I'm sure you've read this post too, but it is one of the most brilliant posts ever written in the blogosphere and makes me laugh out loud every time I read it. Having a bad day? The tale of simple dog and helper dog will brighten it up.

The Dish's earlier post on canine IQ tests here. And the full blog is worth a look.

Evgeny Morozov's review of Keven Kelly's book, "What Technology Wants", makes some challenging points. And then concludes thus:

The main reason why Kelly wrote What Technology Wants became clear to me only after I looked at his review of his own book, which was conveniently published on one of his blogs:

Taken together these giga-trends inform the development of technology investment and the choice technological expressions today. These “wants” of technology provide a long-horizon framework for business—your business. I’ll be doing as many talks at companies and organizations about “what technology wants” as I can in the coming months."

Kelly is not the first technology guru to make a living by selling advice to corporations. But it is hard to imagine the previous generation of serious thinkers about technology—the likes of Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford and John Dewey—moonlighting as corporate advisers to Danone and Halliburton.

Kelly responds here:

In fact I did about 100 talks on the book and not one was a paid talk. I paid my travel expenses for most of these talks out of my own pocket. My motivation as an author would be familiar to Morozov as author of his own book: to disseminate ideas as widely as possible. If the state of my generosity is an important point in Morozov's review (and it seems to be), he or TNR may want to add an update and correction to reflect the facts.

I find the military's explanation of why they strip Manning naked each night and then require him to stand naked outside his cell every morning … er, unpersuasive. They've made his bedding suicide proof – why not find some clothing that could do the same – even though there's no evidence he's a real threat to himself. From his lawyer:

The decision to strip PFC Manning of his clothing every night for an indefinite period of time is clearly punitive in nature.  There is no mental health justification for the decision.  There is no basis in logic for this decision.  PFC Manning is under 24 hour surveillance, with guards never being more than a few feet away from his cell.  PFC Manning is permitted to have his underwear and clothing during the day, with no apparent concern that he will harm himself during this time period.  Moreover, if Brig officials were genuinely concerned about PFC Manning using either his underwear or flip-flops to harm himself (despite the recommendation of the Brig's psychiatrist) they could undoubtedly provide him with clothing that would not, in their view, present a risk of self-harm.  Indeed, Brig officials have provided him other items such as tear-resistant blankets and a mattress with a built-in pillow due to their purported concerns.

There is only one word to describe the treatment of this model prisoner: sadism. Glenn Greenwald has been following the case closely and has two disturbing must-reads here and here. We all hoped that under Obama, brutal treatment of military prisoners and lies about it would end. In this case, they haven't.

get addicted to … sending out a WARM SIGNAL from get addicted to … on Vimeo.

(Hat tip: Swiss Miss; Update: The original mental health break scheduled for today wasn't working and has been replaced with the above video.)

Dennis Baron rails against the Dictionary Act, an old federal law that defines writing as “printing and typewriting and reproductions of visual symbols by photographing, multigraphing, mimeographing, manifolding, or otherwise”:

Writing is becoming less and less a physical object which can be grasped, or whose physical location can be fixed in time and space, and more and more something that can be coded and streamed, fragmented and rematerialized, zipped and expanded, mashed and remixed, and moved around with the fingertips on a touch screen. 

It gets closer and closer to speech.

New Orleans, Louisiana, 11.30 am

“To the notion that Obama has a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview, the sensible response is: If only. Obama’s natural habitat is as American as the nearest faculty club; he is a distillation of America’s academic mentality; he is as American as the other professor-president, Woodrow Wilson. A question for former history professor Gingrich: Why implicate Kenya?” – George Will.