Month: November 2010 Page 1 of 4

this is officially the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a month.

Yearbook Blacks Out Kids’ Eyes for Fear of Porn Potential – ParentDish

What would you do if you got your kids’ yearbook and all the eyes had been blacked out with magic marker?

Personally, I’d try to wake up. But at a school in England, the principal is very much awake and behind this whole thing. Apparently, she was so worried someone might cut out the kids’ faces, paste them on child porn pictures and post them on the Internet — yes, that’s really her concern — that she ordered the teachers to manually black out all the children’ eyes.

Let’s pause for a second to consider how lovely an illustration this is of what I call “Worst-First” thinking. That is, thinking up the worst, most perverse explanation for something first, instead of assuming a less dramatic, but far more likely, rationale.

Map of the World’s Countries Rearranged by Population | Strange Maps | Big Think

By autographedcat

On November 30, 2010

In Blog

I love stuff like this. It serves no purpose other than to make you bend your mind around the world in interesting new ways. And that’s kinda cool all by itself.

490 – Map of the World’s Countries Rearranged by Population | Strange Maps | Big Think

What if the world were rearranged so that the inhabitants of the country with the largest population would move to the country with the largest area? And the second-largest population would migrate to the second-largest country, and so on?

The result would be this disconcerting, disorienting map. In the world described by it, the differences in population density between countries would be less extreme than they are today. The world’s most densely populated country currently is Monaco, with 43,830 inhabitants/mi² (16,923 per km²) (1). On the other end of the scale is Mongolia, which is less densely populated by a factor of almost exactly 10,000, with a mere 4.4 inhabitants/mi² (1.7 per km²).

The averages per country would more closely resemble the global average of 34 per mi² (13 per km²). But those evened-out statistics would describe a very strange world indeed. The global population realignment would involve massive migrations, lead to a heap of painful demotions and triumphant promotions, and produce a few very weird new neighbourhoods.

What it’s like to have sex with someone with Asperger’s | Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

By autographedcat

On November 30, 2010

In Blog

I’d be hestiant to generalise this to all people (or even any other people) with Asperger’s , but it’s certainly a fascinating look at one individual.

What it’s like to have sex with someone with Asperger’s | Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

You think it would be really fun to have sex with me. Because, I think you can tell from my posts, I’ll do anything. But maybe you can also tell from my posts that it’s a little bit weird. Because you know that I’ll say anything, too, but sometimes, I make you cringe.

I think I’m that way in bed, too.

This post is about work. And sex, which are two of the essential areas of life one needs to be able to function in before you can feel like a normal adult. And both sex and work are governed by a set of rules that many people are able to learn just by being in the world.

Gafilk is soon!

By autographedcat

On November 29, 2010

In Blog

It’s the Georgia Filk Convention, happening 7-9 January 2011 at the Crown Plaza Airport in Atlanta, GA.

Guest Of Honour: Seanan McGuire
Toastmaster: Matt Leger
Interfilk Guest: Howard Scrimgeour
PLUS another Super Secret Guest!

Come celebrate the fannish New Year with three days of fun, music, and friendship! We’ll have great concerts, the annual dinner dance banquet featuring Play It With Moxie, and, of course, singing until the early hours.

Membership is only $40 through November 30, 2010. (That’s tomorrow, so send in your registration today! We will announce the Super Secret Guest on Wednesday!

You can get more information about Gafilk, including online registration, at :

http://www.gafilk.org/

Hope to see you there!

(Please feel free to repost this to other appropriate communities and lists you think might be interested.)

There Is More To The Local Movement Than Just Food : TreeHugger

By autographedcat

On November 26, 2010

In Blog

There’s nothing shocking in this, but its nice to have some numbers.

There Is More To The Local Movement Than Just Food : TreeHugger

According to a study commissioned by Michigan’s Local First, “when West Michigan consumers choose a locally owned business over a non-local alternative, $73 of every $100 spent stays in the community. By contrast, only $43 of every $100 spent at a non-locally owned business remains in the community.” This year, a coalition of groups is promoting a holiday challenge to shop downtown and support local businesses.

Your mind, well and nicely blown

By autographedcat

On November 26, 2010

In Blog

The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine. And that is *awesome*.

Mark Morford: Your mind, well and nicely blown

We are never going to run out.

This is the good news. Wait, check that: This is the astonishing, God-exploding, soul-altering, holier-than-wow news you must sip like a fine absinthe and jack straight into your bloodskin like a heroin bomb and then suck into your very anima like Lindsay Lohan on a coke bender.

It might sound obvious, the idea that wonders will never cease, that we will continue to be blown away by new discoveries for as long as we shall exist, that the world will keep astonishing us with stunning ideas, organisms, diseases and cures, synapses and connections, modes of being and ways of understanding for all eternity, despite our efforts to thwart it, deny it, reject it, or dumb ourselves down so much that we no longer have a goddamn clue what’s going on.

But it’s not obvious at all. We are, after all, nothing if not preternaturally jaded and wary. Many assume we’re at a point in history when we’ve made most of the major breakthroughs and discoveries, have established all the laws of time and physics we are ever going to need. No more man on the moon, no more discovery of antibiotics, no more E=MC2, no more sorry-Pope-the-world-ain’t-flat kind of epiphanies left.

My Helical Tryst: Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hi

By autographedcat

On November 26, 2010

In Blog

I’ve been reluctant to weigh in on the TSA scanners because there simply wasn’t enough data, pro or con, to really make a decision about their safety. Jason Bell goes a long way towards giving us more hard data to consider, and it’s somewhat alarming.

I still maintain that the real problem with this sort of thing is that it doesn’t actually improve the safety of air travel to any meaningful degree, unless the object is to make flying so onerous that no one bothers to do it anymore.

My Helical Tryst: Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hide your wife

Last spring, a group of scientists at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) including John Sedat Ph.D., David Agard Ph.D., Robert Stroud, Ph.D. and Marc Shuman, M.D. sent a letter of concern to the TSA regarding the implementation of their ‘Advanced Imaging Technology’, or body scanners as a routine method of security screening in US airports. Of specific concern is the scanner that uses X-ray back-scattering. In the letter they raise some interesting points, which I’ve quoted below:

“Our overriding concern is the extent to which the safety of this scanning device has been adequately demonstrated. This can only be determined by a meeting of an impartial panel of experts that would include medical physicists and radiation biologists at which all of the available relevant data is reviewed.”
“The X-ray dose from these devices has often been compared in the media to the cosmic ray exposure inherent to airplane travel or that of a chest X-ray. However, this comparison is very misleading: both the air travel cosmic ray exposure and chest X-rays have much higher X-ray energies and the health consequences are appropriately understood in terms of the whole body volume dose. In contrast, these new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol, possibly by one to two orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high.”
“In addition, it appears that real independent safety data do not exist.”
“There is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations. We are unanimous in believing that the potential health consequences need to be rigorously studied before these scanners are adopted.”

250 Introductions of 185 People, Groups, & Things

By autographedcat

On November 24, 2010

In Blog

Adam Savage: TSA saw my junk, missed 12″ razor blades

By autographedcat

On November 24, 2010

In Blog

Ok, this is both hysterical and illustrative of why I dislike the TSA security protocols. I don’t personally care if they see or touch my junk. I would happily strip naked and walk through the scanner if it just meant getting through the line faster.

I dislike the TSA security protocols because they don’t actually work. There’s a reason the term “security theatre” was coined, and why it’s appropriate here.

Adam Savage: TSA saw my junk, missed 12″ razor blades

The TSA isn’t the most respected of governmental agencies right now, but at least it comes by the poor reputation honestly. The lack of standards, inconsistent application of searches and policies, and occasional rude agent all combine to make flying an unpleasant experience. It’s often derided as “security theater,” which describes the experience of Mythbuster Adam Savage before a recent flight.

Savage was put through the full-body scanner, and while he joked that it made his penis feel small, no one seemed to notice the items he was carrying on his person. The video tells the rest of the story.

If we try to engineer perfect children, will they grow up to be unbearable? – By Katie Roiphe – Slat

By autographedcat

On November 24, 2010

In Blog

Not being a parent myself, I have no personal insights to add here, but have long wondered at the incredible amount of structure most kids seem to grow up in these days, compared to when I was growing up.

If we try to engineer perfect children, will they grow up to be unbearable? – By Katie Roiphe – Slate Magazine

Can we, for a moment, flash back to the benign neglect of the 1970s and ’80s? I can remember my parents having parties, wild children running around until dark, catching fireflies. If these children helped themselves to three slices of cake, or ingested the second-hand smoke from cigarettes, or carried cocktails to adults who were ever so slightly slurring their words, they were not noticed; they were loved, just not monitored. And, as I remember it, those warm summer nights of not being focused on were liberating. In the long sticky hours of boredom, in the lonely, unsupervised, unstructured time, something blooms; it was in those margins that we became ourselves