Culture – Page 19

“How I Met Your Mother”

Published on September 24, 2007

Thanks to Racialicious, now we know where all those pudgy, glistening-faced young Republicans that infest Washington like naked mole-rats get their hard-faced trophy wives from.

What does an ambitious young Harvard man want in a woman? Here’s a Craig’s List ad from one of America’s “best and brightest”:

[Click image for bigger Flickr version]

No Black, Asian, overweight or unattractive women for Harvard party

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
What woman could resist such a charming invitation? (Thanks Christopher!)

More commentary on this CraigsList ad here, here and here. And if you never read Wendi Muse’s classic post analyzing the racism of CraigsList personal ads, what are you waiting for?

Far be it from me to condemn dating classifieds, but if you ask me, (you didn’t, but I’m telling you anyway – isn’t the internet grand?) any self-respecting woman who’s ambitious and greedy enough to respond to such an overtly racist, classist and sexist ad as that deserves all the connubial bliss that’s coming to her.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that this guy’s a wannabe who’s just too cheap to spring for a paid escort.

I wonder, could this advertiser be one of these eligible bachelors?

Here’s A Good Feed

Published on September 23, 2007

An actual rss cookie , from Cake Journal:

I thought that the RSS feed icon would look fun as a cookie. So I made a cookie and took a photo of it. I then replaced the original RSS feed icon with the picture of the RSS feed cookie on the RSS feed subscription. I think it look great and is a bit fun too.

Happy Caking

Louise

If you think that’s nerdy…

“What happens to us in the future? Do we become assholes or something?”

Published on August 7, 20071 Comment

The online world’s near-unanimous reaction to this science news in today’s Daily Telegraph was immediate: yay! Hoverboards! Is there any hope for us or are we just too trivial to survive?

Physicists have ‘solved’ mystery of levitation

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Levitation has been elevated from being pure science fiction to science fact, according to a study reported today by physicists.

In theory the discovery could be used to levitate a person. In earlier work the same team of theoretical physicists showed that invisibility cloaks are feasible.

Now, in another report that sounds like it comes out of the pages of a Harry Potter book, the University of St Andrews team has created an ‘incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together.

Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts.

Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.

The Casimir force is a consequence of quantum mechanics, the theory that describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles that is not only the most successful theory of physics but also the most baffling.

The force is due to neither electrical charge or gravity, for example, but the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together, also explaining a “dry glue” effect that enables a gecko to walk across a ceiling.

Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attact.

Because the Casimir force causes problems for nanotechnologists, who are trying to build electrical circuits and tiny mechanical devices on silicon chips, among other things, the team believes the feat could initially be used to stop tiny objects from sticking to each other.

Prof Leonhardt explained, “The Casimir force is the ultimate cause of friction in the nano-world, in particular in some microelectromechanical systems.

Such systems already play an important role – for example tiny mechanical devices which triggers a car airbag to inflate or those which power tiny ‘lab on chip’ devices used for drugs testing or chemical analysis.

Micro or nano machines could run smoother and with less or no friction at all if one can manipulate the force.” Though it is possible to levitate objects as big as humans, scientists are a long way off developing the technology for such feats, said Dr Philbin.

The practicalities of designing the lens to do this are daunting but not impossible and levitation “could happen over quite a distance”.

Prof Leonhardt leads one of four teams – three of them in Britain – to have put forward a theory in a peer-reviewed journal to achieve invisibility by making light waves flow around an object – just as a river flows undisturbed around a smooth rock.

Hang on…. invisiblity, you say? Oh, well then, that’s different.

Yay! Invisible hoverboards!

Does It Come With A Nuke In Its Handbag?

Published on August 7, 20072 Comments

Or maybe the latest edition should have extra pockets for all that Murdoch dosh?

I can’t imagine who’d actually buy this Hillary Clinton talking doll, especially as it doesn’t really look like her. Mind you, the the Laura Bush talking doll (Xanax not included) has caught that dead-fish, glazed stare perfectly.

Hillary Clinton Talking Doll

Hillary Clinton Talking Doll

Item 3051803
Price $29.95

Our First Lady talking dolls are crafted to historical accuracy, each having 25 voice clips recorded in the first lady’s voice. A biographical pamphlet and certificate of authenticity are included and presented with the dolls in collectible patriotic packaging. 12 in. Stand included. Assembled in USA.

Unfortunately it doesn’t say what the 25 voice clips are. Maybe this:

• I am particularly horrified by the use of propaganda and the manipulation of the truth and the revision of history,

Sure you are, Hils. Or this:

•Vote for me, I’m female! And I’m not Black!

Oh all right, you got me, I made the last one up.

There Is No Escape

Published on August 1, 2007

I thought Jesuits In Space was just fiction: but no, it seems as though the bloody Jesuits get everywhere.

Mind you, theologically speaking if the Jesuits accept Second Life as an actual second life, what does that make The Afterlife they preach? Third Life?

Society of Jesus calls missionaries to Second Life
Saving virtual souls from ‘erotic simulation‘
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Published Friday 27th July 2007 18:36 GMT

Jesuit missionaries may soon venture into Second Life, intent on saving virtual people from virtual sins.

Writing in the Italian Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, whose contents are approved by the Vatican, Father Antonio Spadaro has told fellow Catholics that they shouldn’t be wary of venturing into Second Life’s virtual world, arguing that the online alternate universe might be the perfect place to land converts, Reuters reports.

“It’s not possible to close our eyes to this phenomenon or rush to judge it,” Spadaro said. “Instead, it needs to be understood … the best way to understand it is to enter it.” A regular contributor to the Jesuit journal, Spadaro has also lauded Tom Waits as a Christian role model.

Really? Tom Waits? Well maybe he has a point there…No! I refute the hipness of Jesuits. That’s how they get you, the sneaky buggers. First it’s science fiction, then it’s rock music, then it’s the internet…

With his latest piece, the 40-year-old academic warned that “the erotic dimension is very present” in Second Life, explaining that users often buy virtual genitalia for their virtual avatars and that Linden Lab’s 3D world is “open to any form of erotic stimulation from prostitution to pedophilia.”

I expect that last activity’ll have priests flocking to Second Life in their droves.

What is the Catholic church’s position on celibate priests committing virtual sin, anyway? Is it still a sin? Since it’s virtual and not actual hat’s worse, het or gay virtual priest sex or paedophiliac priest zex? After all, none of it’s really happening.

I was never a fan of Second Life to begin with, it seems no different to the first really, except with clunkier avatars and the ability to virtually fly. And once religion is involved then there really is no difrerence at all. So much for the new paradigm of online society.

But he also said that Second Life is home to various churches and temples, quoting a Swedish Muslim who says “his avatar prays as regularly as he prays in real life,” and though this sort of thing is far from the norm, Spadaro believes that many who venture into Second Life’s virtual den of iniquity may be calling out for virtual help.

Well if they are I’m sure they can find it with no help from bloody interfering missionaries.

“Deep down, the digital world can be considered, in its way, mission territory,” he said. “Second Life is somewhere where the opportunity to meet people and to grow should not be missed, therefore, any initiative that can inspire the residents in a positive way should be considered opportune.”®

What I want to know is whether these priests who’ll venture into Second Life will do so as priests or whether they’ll hide their true purpose and what they actually are behind a non-religious avatar. There are serious issues about honesty and integrity that arise from Second Life as just another channel for religious proselytisation for any religious group, not just Catholics : nobody knows who anyone is, what their age is or what their religion, if any, is unless and until they choose to reveal it. Messing with unknown people’s religious beliefs is playing with fire.

What would be fun, though, is if the Jesuits entered Second Life en masse and ended up being converted to Hinduism. Or if they all had Spanish Inquisition avatars…