Saturday, June 05, 2004
JUNK FOOD AND SOUL MATES [coolmel]
good thing i don't drink beer.
Marco, you might find your soul connection here.
Posted on
12:34 AM
Friday, June 04, 2004
IS THE CORPORATION PATHOLOGICALLY INSANE? [Chris]
I've been slowly crawling my way out a green party idealism over the past decade, waking up from my shattered post-modern university education (considered in light of my education mantra "I got an education in spite of being at university") and realising that globalisation and corporations are actually bereft of souls, psyche's and any real sense of responsibility -- they simply can't have them, because they don't have a mind, a brain, or, to point, a soul (whatever the hell that is!) The insight being that if we don't like these nasty corporations, and the globalisation they've grown, WE'RE the one's to blame -- if you don't like what 'we' do, do something different, change the laws, or whatever, because currently most of 'us' are happy to go along because we don't recognise any viable alternatives. If you need a little encouragement, or if you ever wondered if corporations are actually pathological manifestations of our collectively muddled intentions, you now don't have to read the boring theory anymore, you can watch the movie "The Corporation." It was tag-lined by The Economist recently with this apt comparison: "If the corporation were a person, would that person be a psychopath?" My answer? No, they're sociopathic -- get a dictionary before you call the all-powerful creations of "ours" nasty names... "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -- Martin Luther King
Posted on
8:24 PM
GOT TO KEEP THE BLOGGING JUICE GOIN' [coolmel]
i don't mean to monopolize the blogging here, but i hate the day to pass without seeing some new stuff posted. so i'm taking charge of functioning as a filler... Vagina Warriors: An Emerging Paradigm, An Emerging Species. I have sat with women in crowded factories in Juarez, in crumbling shelters in the back streets of Cairo, in makeshift centers for teenage girls and women in Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Pine Ridge and Watts...
Posted on
8:05 PM
Thursday, June 03, 2004
FRIENDS IS OVER... [coolmel]
i think i like the white/red jersey, so i can wear it when i cheer for these folks who desperately want their preciousssss... on second thought, maybe i'll just wear this, so i'll have a reason to pick a fight in a bar.
Posted on
7:54 PM
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
TRANSIT JUNE 8 [Meera]
Supposedly the end of the Mayan long-count calendar is in 2012, the next time this type of transit will occur, not this time. This is still, however, the first Venus-Earth-Sun transit since 1882, and it is believed by many, for scientific and flakey reasons alike, to be an Important Event. Whether or not it ushers in a new era for humanity or provides an accurate measurement of our distance from the sun, it is a novelty. So check it out, even if the Mayans didn't care about this one.
Posted on
5:41 PM
THE ROOT WORD OF "BLOGOSPHERE" IS NOT "BLOG" [coolmel]
I PROPOSE A NAME for the intellectual cyberspace we bloggers occupy: the Blogosphere. Simple enough; the root word is logos, from the Greek meaning, variously: In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle, or human reasoning about the cosmos; Among the Sophists, the topics of rational argument or the arguments themselves. (The American Heritage? Dictionary of the English Language)
{ permaquote @ DailyPundit }
(quote + permalink = permaquote)
Posted on
3:45 AM
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
LAZY BLOGGER FINDS DECADE OLD NERD STORY, AND THINKS IT IS FUNNY [Jason]
Lazy blogger finds decade old nerd story, and thinks it is funny.
Neal Stephenson
VS
Harmless smiley
I don't think I've written anything too spiffy so far in The Drinking Hole so far just nerdy exploits. I was thinking Paul seems to be off the job in that department these days so I thought I'd fill in and do my best.
I was checking out 16th century geography guru and cyperpunk writer extradonaire Neal Stephenson's website tonight when I came across this little tidbit in this groovy section about the author. It was written in 2002 and it was a follow up of sorts to this piece Smiley's people he wrote for TNR in 1993. It's pretty funny to me, hopefully you'll find it amusing as well.
Smileys:
Fahlman 1,
Stephenson 0
When I was younger I wrote an opinion piece for The New Republic in which I denounced smileys (symbols like this :) ) and the people who used them in e-mail, including Scott Fahlman, who invented them.
My smileys piece is an object lesson in why the Internet is sometimes a bad thing. The problem with the Internet is that nothing fades away there. And so a silly little opinion piece like this one lives on forever. In an earlier era, it would have ended up moldering away in a few libraries where no one would ever see it.
For the record, I no longer agree with my own smileys editorial of 1993, for two general reasons:
1.I wrote it in a snotty tone that I wouldn’t use if I were writing it today.
2. It reflects a mentality about writing that I clung to early in my career but have since rejected. According to this mentality, the way to write well is to produce a bad first draft and then toil through many revisions, editing it and refining it to bring it ever closer to some supposed Platonic ideal. If you believe in this (as I used to) and if you apply it to the topic of smileys, you arrive at the conclusion that smiley users are lazy writers who could get along just fine without smileys if only they took the trouble to revise and edit their work a little bit, to make the meaning clearer. Of course, as Fahlman himself points out in his web page about smileys, this is not the way people actually write. Since I wrote my denunciation of smileys, I have become more interested in the way that people (including myself) actually do write, and have stopped worrying so much about how they ought to write. So, when I re-examine what Fahlman and I have written about smileys, I end up agreeing with Fahlman, and thinking that this Stephenson kid must be living in some kind of fantasy world.
You can also find other neato Neal Stephenson stuff including two of his hefty 900pg tomes at his websiteNealstephenson.com. Also TechGnosis author and Integral Naked guest Erik Davis does an excellent analysis of Snow Crash in TechGnosis. Ch-ch-check it out.
Posted on
11:31 PM
CAMERAS EVERYWHERE [Chris]
You all remember 'that' video of Nick Berg? You also know of Moore's award winning "Fahrenheit 9/11" documentary? Did you know that Moore has 20 minutes of interview with a very pro-war Nick Berg shot for the doco, but never used? Ouch. I haven't seen either, but it does seem like Melbourne Australia will see the doco before anyone in America does, go figure. I wonder if the two clips would make a meaningful collage for the western psyche to contemplate? Or am I just sick?
A pigon pair? 
Posted on
6:59 PM
Monday, May 31, 2004
DIE BOLD WITH A VENGEANCE [.j.evonne.]
Now I remember why two centuries of my fathers and grandfathers fought for this country. More on Diebold and recent conflicts of interest can be found all over the web. God bless America, apple pie and casinos full of whirly twirly voting machines.
Posted on
5:04 PM
THE MANIFEST LIVE - MAY 2004 [coolmel]
i'll always remember the day
when i first saw a marimba
to be the best TM Live ever.
Posted on
2:45 PM
Sunday, May 30, 2004
GOT TATTOOS? [coolmel]
thinking of getting a tattoo but tired of all the cliche images you see in your local body mutilation shops? try Russian prison tattoos -- The tattoos are painfully applied with needles and electric shavers, using ink made from urine, soot, and shampoo. Infection from the procedure is frequent, and death not uncommon.
wasabe...
Posted on
11:16 AM
