Blogging a slim possibility, dependent on whether the local pub still has wifi. As well, of course, as my having anything to say other than complaining about the weather. And the midges. Etc.
links for 2007-08-16
-
The West is running a protectionist racket against the developing world – “one can only imagine the reaction if a middle-class Kenyan tried to offset the carbon emissions from his swimming pool by buying Al Gore a dung-fired stove.”
-
Landlines of course. The mobile sector is far more healthy.
-
“…suggests that healthy people are able to effectively regulate their negative emotions through conscious effort, but that the necessary neural circuits are dysfunctional in many patients with depression”… so stop saying ‘just snap out of it’ cos we c
-
It’s contagious. Oh shit.
-
Watch the birdies
-
Supercoool
Cool and shiny
So you’re out and about, as you are, and there’s a bangin’ choon winding down the aural canal from some boomin’ sound system. “That’s a bangin’ choon” you think to yourself. But you’re waaaaaay too cool to, like, ask what it is. Or you’re hearing it in a lift and there’s nobody available to question. Whatever. Either way help is at hand:
Yes, you really can dial a number on your mobile to access large numbers of autistic obsessive-compulsive music-loving elves a machine to “listen” to the said choon, identify it and text back the relevant details. But at a price, as you can see. However the service is impressive given the non-mainstream nature of the track it was tested on. (The video is extraordinary. Mr Vek is a man unconcerned with image, I would guess.)
So that’s the cool and the shiny. Also not hot, but in a bad way, is the experience of hanging round on dating sites.
Im seeking a lady who is in need of mutual pleasures, Im hoping for regular meetings, friendship is also important to me, Im 56yrs Slim with a well toned body, a nice tight bum, and reasonably well endowed
Im have average looks, Im clean
says one hopeful.
At many cases I am romantic, and like good conversations with anyone normal person, but in bed I like to face big boobs
says another.
It’s been a long time (a very long time) since I was last on the market and “dating” isn’t something I’m familiar with. Looks like that’s not going to change any time soon. I’ll just have to keep ogling trees instead.
links for 2007-08-13
-
Also comes under the “maybe one day” category
links for 2007-08-12
-
Interesting post and discussion in comments about self-transcendence. Via RMack.
-
Working against FGM in Senegal and just won a HUGE PRIZE!! Shiny shiny shiny.
-
A useful corrective for cyberutopians. The ensuring the tools for conversation exist doesn’t guarantee good dialogue.
links for 2007-08-11
-
Available on the National Health!
-
By stoning.
-
“…respond to ambient moonlight, dimming and brightening each month as the moon cycles through its phases.”
-
Interesting analysis of NICE and the NHS decision to withdraw drug from early Alzheimer’s sufferers.
-
Shiny! I keep banging on about the revolution of mobile telephony on information consumption and dissemination in the developing world. Here it is happening.
-
What it says on the tin.
-
Maybe one day…
A pointed digital thought
The widespread reporting of a man having elective surgical modification of his thumbs to reduce their size in order better to use his touch-sensitive iPhone keypad and the chance remark of a friend that their child uses their thumb to switch on lights led me to wonder about pointing.
…pointing is an activity that sits at the intersection of theoretical accounts of language acquisition, semiotics, social cognition, the neurobiology of communication, the philosophy of mind, and the evolution of language.
All pointing by small people that I’ve seen involves the index finger. Is this in some way innate or is it learned? Would a baby reared by acquired-thumb-dominant people point with its thumb? When/if thumb dominance becomes more widespread would it affect existing digital gestures? would, for instance, the (culturally specific) signal for hitch-hiking of an upraised thumb change to something different because of possible confusion with other gestures? Would you eventually give someone the thumb instead of the finger?
There has, of course, been research conducted into the optimal size of a target for a touch-screen device operated by the thumb with a single hand. Of course. It’s Finnish and involved gathering very specific information:
Hand width and thumb length were recorded for each participant. Thumb length varied between 99 and 125 mm (m=115 mm, σ = 5.75), and hand width varied between 75 and 97 mm (m=88 mm, σ = 6.08).
It seems to me that another important variable, and one which lent credence to the thumb-modding story, is thumb width. That doesn’t seem to have been measured.
Meanwhile I idly picked up a ruler and measured the length of my own thumb. It appears to be mutantly short. Very very much shorter than the shortest Finnish thumb despite my hand width being only just smaller than the narrowest Finnish hand. I wonder whether I am deformed or people in Finland have generally very long thumbs.
Water Ship Down
Ok, it’s blurry. She was drumming, the light was a single domestic standard lamp with a bit of yellow plastic over it and I was feeling not so good (actually the food poisoning hadn’t kicked in at that point but it’s an excuse and I’m using it). However is not Amy one of the most beautiful people imaginable? Yes, is the correct answer. Always has been, always utterly unaware of being so.
And here, unfortunately largely obscured by hair and a microphone, is her elder brother Tomas. Just as delightful.
I’d like to be able to give a thoughtful, insightful and informative review of the music but unfortunately I can’t. Firstly because it was so loud I couldn’t really hear it, was worried about the future of my hearing and retreated after taking a few photographs back to the bar. Secondly because the above-mentioned food poisoning was approaching like an avalanche down a high mountain and I was concentrating very hard on trying not to throw up.
There’s another one, of Amy at her drums, here.
links for 2007-08-10
-
Scientists with related tattoos. Really makes me want my mobius ouroboros. Maybe when I get back from holiday.
-
Complete with pictures
-
yup.
-
Bloody exercise. I know, I KNOW. It’s DOING it that’s the problem.
-
Was discussing just this – inappropriate health interventions in the elderly – with friend recently. Frankly, we all die sooner or later. Sometimes sooner and with dignity is better than later.
-
Better searching
Shorts for summer with an extra leg
I’m quite enmeshed in Facebook and flickr and thus feel slightly decentralised. Tripartite? trinitarian? a tripod? highly stable? [stop. now].
Anyway, from Facebook I hereby reproduce a fengtastic response to the previous post:
I’ve been looking at fly fishing flies. The Purple Egg Sucking Leech comes close to lav:
(from the Wooly Buggers)
There’s the Red Flying Ant and the Red Ibis among the Queens, Parmachanee Belle of the Dry Flies; a whole variety of Italian tapestry shades in the Crystal Buggers, just no lav. Outdone by a landslide though by the feather boas of Pink and Purple Rabbit Leeches.
Personally I like playing with my crab but if it’s size you want, conking the bloody fish out is always a last resort if you’re wired up with Bomber Salmons.
Oh here we go, the standard BDSM superhero vinyl costume types we use back home:
I’m not entirely sure whether this means mr feng squeezes into a glow-in-the-dark rubber cephalopod costume for an exciting night out hooking or goes fishing with squid lures. However I find it appropriate that the picture is titled “assred”.
“Lav”, I should probably explain, is short for lavender well-known, of course, for its calming and soothing effect. Spritz! spritz! And here’s one I saw earlier…
Which of course brings us from Facebook to flickr. The public element of Tate Britain‘s How We Are: Photographing Britain exhibition has been wrapped up… no more entries are being accepted to the How We Are Now flickr pool and ten finalists have been chosen from each of the four categories. None of my submissions, you will be astonished to learn, is among them.
However a very delightful and clearly highly discerning photographer, Stuart Haden, thought that one of them should have been, which makes me extremely happy. And he gives a fundamentally important piece of advice – “Follow your passion, never give up, enjoy what you do.”
I went to see the exhibition but don’t recall writing about it. Did I? I seem to remember having a couple of passing thoughts about it but all that now remains in my small-capacity brain (apart from the OCD vegetable and fruit photographer who later used his glass plates for cold frames) was that the most exciting moment was standing in front of a huge ever-changing display of pictures by a portrait photographer and seeing a friend scroll by.
Elsewhere I’m really enjoying Xtinpore, with whom I share displeasure about 29, and her friend pluvialis. Energetic, superbright, gorgeous, funny, multi-talented/obsessed and fascinating. Damn! And one of them is a real live falconer. Double damn!
Shortly I am off to a gig about which I was alerted by a friend on Facebook. He is a member of the band. As is his sister (she’s the drummer). They’re both my friends on Facebook and they’re both the children of one of my dearest bosom buddies. Much has been written about Facebook but I have yet to see an anguished plea about what to do when one of your mother’s friends befriends you digitally. (Oh the things I could tell her. Not. Well, perhaps. For a small fee. Silence is also available in multiple currencies.)
frizzyLogic 