Dem bones
// January 31st, 2005
Downocrats and Getuplicans
// January 27th, 2005The National Funk Congress is no closer to resolving its deadlock over the controversial “get up/get down” issue, insiders reported Monday.
The bitter “get up/get down” battle, which has polarized the nation’s funk community, is part of a long-running battle between the two factions, rooted in more than 35 years of conflict over the direction in which the American people should shake it.
Fun_People Archive - 15 Sep - Downocrats and Getuplicans
“Four Plus Four Equals Red”
// January 26th, 2005I’ve always been fascinated with Synesthesia–a neurological condition in which some people experience sensations triggering unrelated senses. People report seeing sounds, tasting words, etc.
Scotsman.com News - Top Stories - The colour of music
Folksonomies: Created Synchronicity
// January 26th, 2005Here’s a fascinating thread on Flickr Groups about people who have discovered _other_ Flickr users who have taken basically the same pictures they have. The conversation starts as a “hey isn’t that neat”, and devolves into mysticism, psychology, philosophy, and the nature of coincidence.
There’s no big mystery here. This is exactly the sort of thing a folksonomy (a collection of data tagged in a completely unstructured way by the users) makes possible. My photo, tagged “Ufizi Gallery Florence Italy Sculpture” will match up with possibly hundreds of others taking basically the same photos of basically the same stuff. As the user base scales, the likelihood of “tag coincidence” improves. Even seemingly unlikely pairs of pictures start to match up out of nowhere. This _is_ the power of the semantic web–and it’s fascinating to watch the human mind try to deal with it. In a lot of ways, we’re still lizards, looking for the mystical in everyday occurrances.
Things that are Bad
// January 26th, 2005
Duke Party Features Bikinis, Baby Oil
// January 25th, 2005This is right in my neighborhood, too! Why wasn’t I inited to this!?
Yahoo! News - Duke U. Party Features Bikinis, Baby Oil
I4U News - USB Gadget: Self Destruction Button DX
// January 20th, 2005|
|Sometimes form is greater than function. Like in the case of this gorgeous self-destruct button. It’s a USB-based computer peripheral that does… _something_… Nonetheless, I NEED one!|
I4U News - USB Gadget: Self Destruction Button DX
The Age of Egocasting
// January 16th, 2005Brilliant essay on the impact of personalization technologies.
By giving us the illusion of perfect control, these technologies risk making us incapable of ever being surprised. They encourage not the cultivation of taste, but the numbing repetition of fetish. And they contribute to what might be called “egocasting,” the thoroughly personalized and extremely narrow pursuit of one’s personal taste. In thrall to our own little technologically constructed worlds, we are, ironically, finding it increasingly difficult to appreciate genuine individuality.
I’ve always been a music fetishist. I pick certain albums and I play them over and over and over again. Or I alternate between my Chosen Tunes and anything else — play the Annointed Album, and then something else, then the Annointed Album, then something else, then the Annointed Album.
It never occurred to me that I become a genre specialist by having that much control over my media input. For sure it had crossed my mind that my DVR prevents me from knowing about anything I don’t already know — hell, I fast forward through commercials about shows I haven’t seen before — but the impact of that never really crosed my mind. And I’d certainly never thougt about tying it all the way back to the Remote Control.
SOS: Students for an Orwellian Society
// January 16th, 2005
One black, one white.
// January 13th, 2005
What Should I Do If The Internet Goes Down?
// January 13th, 2005Television Tropes & Idioms
// January 13th, 2005This is great. All the television tropes, themes, and idioms, neatly dissected, analyzed, categories, and named for your memory-lane-strolling pleasure.
Television Tropes & Idioms - Main.HomePage
