Love News

A few months ago, I placed a google alert on the word "love". Not really sure what I was looking for. Hope maybe?

Today I found some.

Fortunately, it can be calculated and the chemistry analyzed, so there's hope...even for the skeptics.
[This is your brain on love.]

Hello Advertising!

Welcome to the 21st century!

Just one thing: We love our brands...you don't need to MAKE us love them. We just do. So instead of selling us something we don't want, give us more of what we do. Deal?
Maybe now that "interactive" got an award, all the rest of y'all will get a fucking clue.

It's Happening

Go see The Happening.

Whatever you're going to say about other Shyamalan films, scary movies, twists, whatever. You're wrong.

This is high level parody right here.

Birds At War

Birds attempt to kill Chicago residents.

Birds shuttle mind-numbing substances across borders.

Apple's Cult Of Personality

I hear tell that when Steve Jobs stepped on stage at the WWDC, there were gasps. Steve wasn't looking is usually lithe and domineering self, and the natives got restless.

But this gossip-fueled phenomenon is not going to be fixed by the well-timed article in Fortune.

Apple has a problem. Their company, their idolatry, their insanity all generate from the Steve Jobs icon, and that's not going to change.

I have no doubt that this guy Cook is an excellent manager, an impressively competent business man, and an inspired thinker. But he's no Steve Jobs.

This doesn't mean, of course, that Apple's future is bleak. There are equally brilliant brains in that company that can steer the ship. But the organizational culture is a kingdom, and like any long-lived dictatorship, the Steve-pleasing cogs of the business are going to be squeaky after a bit. Without the intensity of demand, the high profile megalomania, the Jobsian persona, they may just not be able to do what they've done before.

The communications industry especially is rife with stories of tyrant-lead successes and successor lead disasters (Marconi, Bell, Queen Isabella of Spain...).
I still love my Mac.

(Thanks Business Week for that sweet Steve pic)

What Is Being "In" A Virtual World Anyway?

This linguistic inconsistency has been plaguing me for a while now. We talk about being "in" the real world now, as if, when we are playing in a "virtual world" we are not still in the physical world.

Follow me along for a moment...

When I'm sitting at a computer, typing, reading, looking at stuff, my body is in the physical world. In fact, my brain is located there as well, but many of my cognitive functions are engaged with the markers of the virtual.

When I'm reading a book - Kitchen Confidential, let's say - sitting in the sun, sipping coffee, I am also located in the physical world. But my mind is engaged by the experience of that world, AND by the world as it is perceived by Anthony Bourdain. But here's the kicker: Chef Bourdain's reality is, for me, virtual. It appears to be real because I can relate to the parameters within which the story unfolds, but it is not "REAL".

Let's take WOW, the classic example. Most of the markers of the "real" world appear in that pixelated, server-resident experience as well. Gravity keeps me vertical, training makes me better at something, and if I slice people's heads off, the community reacts to it. But even while my brain may be completely engaged in that narrative where I get to play a Rogue Night Elf and sneak around fucking shit up, I still have to get up to pee.
See where I'm going with this?

So, my two cents for the discussion of this book is as follows: an ethnography conducted entirely within the imaginary parameters of Second Life is incomplete without profiles of the individuals sitting at their computers, playing "themselves" or "others" in the narrative of the computer-based environment.

(Many thanks for the pic MJ Thomas)

Presidential Resume

Raping and Pillaging? Check.
Dominant ideology? Check.
Superiority complex? Check.
Is the US really ready for an enlightened, 21st century male to lead it? Susan Faludi isn't so sure.

Kids Get It

I posted this to The Elizabeth Boop Society, so rather than repeat myself. Go there.

Turn The Other Cheek

So that it's easier to kiss my ass!

Just kidding! Actually, this guy Joe has some killer things to say in response to the "Christian" folks who forward around those anti-gay marriage emails to their fellow fascists.

Bravo, Joe! Well said.
(from www.pettributecreations.com)

Love Finds A Way

California is so conservative, they actually believe that two people can voluntarily enter into a legal contract to love each other, even if they are the same sex!

Next thing you know, they'll let people choose to imbibe intoxicating organic substances with the sanction of the medical community.

Oh, wait...

Early Start

Good thing you're protesting gender discrimination - and doing the research - early on in life, little girl!

Lame "fill-in-the-blank like a girl" comments are the crutch psychological undermining of every boy-girl competition you will ever face.

The sad part is that the gym teacher thought he/she was teaching you something by denying the boys the opportunity to get their asses whooped, fair and square.

"But women can do absolutely everything men can and, if you all you girls and women out there do something, someday receiving the comment, "You throw like a girl," will probably be the best comment anyone could receive." - Shailee Koranne, Grade 6, Abbey Lane Public School

[Couldn't have said it better myself!]

Learnin 'Em Early

There's nothing like seeing a "game for girls" that simulates the exact struggle with beauty, value and identity that they will be forced to endure/navigate their entire fucking lives!

Sounds like FUN
Extraordinarily enraging...grumble, grumble, grumble....

What's All The Fuss?

I feel you, girl.

Well Said

June 12, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

The Sex Speech

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

One of the missed opportunities of the primary season was that Hillary Clinton never gave a speech about gender comparable to Barack Obama’s speech about race.

That was understandable: She didn’t want to be reduced to the “woman candidate.” But such a speech might have triggered a useful national conversation about women in leadership, and so, Mr. Obama, now it’s up to you: Why don’t you give that speech? [Because he doesn't know about gender discrimination. He HAS a penis. But I'd pay to hear Michele on this topic any day.]

I’m helpfully offering some talking points:

Racism is deeper, but sexism may be wider in America today. In polls, more Americans say they would be willing to vote for a black candidate for president than for a female candidate, and sexist put-downs are heard more publicly than racial ones. [Hillary is such a nagging bitch.]

Presumably in part because of sexism (and also because of self-selection), women today are still hugely underrepresented in the political arena. Women constitute about 23 percent of legislators in the 50 states, a proportion that has risen only slightly in the last decade. In addition, the political commentariat is overwhelmingly male, which is one reason that Mrs. Clinton’s supporters felt unfairly battered.

We aren’t always aware of our own biases. Some of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are sure that she was defeated by misogyny, while those who voted against her invariably are dismissive: The reason I didn’t vote for her isn’t that she’s a woman. It’s that she’s a dynastic opportunist who voted for the Iraq war and ... [And any woman that would vote in favor of a paternalistic war is just a father-loving succubus.]

The catch is that abundant psychology research shows that we are often shaped by stereotypes that we are unaware of. Many studies have presented research subjects with the exact same C.V., alternately with a male name and a female name. Usually, the male is perceived as a better fit for executive posts — even among well-meaning people who are against gender discrimination, and even among women.

At the end of the day, none of this proves or disproves the thesis that gender bias played a role in the election. But if Mrs. Clinton was hurt by gender, her problem wasn’t misogynists so much as ordinary men and women who believe in equal opportunity — but also are conditioned to think that a president speaks in a gravelly voice. [As opposed to a level-headed, idealistic, cooperative one.]

A conservative may end up the first woman president. The first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, wasn’t “very Catholic.” In the same way, the first black president probably won’t be “very black,” either in complexion or in any personal history with the civil-rights struggle. And the first female president probably won’t be “very female,” in the sense of emerging from the women’s movement.

Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, both conservatives with no association with the women’s movement, offer hints of the kind of woman who may rise to the White House. Or consider the late Senator Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman nominated for president at a major political party convention. She was a Republican.

Women make a difference in politics, but not a large one. When women first received the right to vote in 1920, the assumption was that they would be a big help to Democrats, who had been more sympathetic to women’s suffrage. Instead, Republicans won the next three presidential elections. Today, the best guide to a senator’s voting behavior is his or her political party and home state, not his or her sex.

Still, it has been disproportionately women in Congress who have championed issues like family planning and abortion rights, and they also seem modestly more attentive to concerns about gender discrimination. Less perspicaciously, women were crucial players in achieving Prohibition.

Politics can make a difference for women. If Mr. Obama wants to show that gender issues are on his radar, he could embrace an issue that no president has ever shown interest in: maternal mortality, the orphan issue of global public health. It’s a disgrace that a woman dies in childbirth once every minute somewhere in the world.

In some African countries, a woman has more than a 1-in-10 lifetime risk of dying in childbirth. If men were dying at such a rate for fathering children, the G-8 would be holding emergency summits. [And not many people would be having sex, much less children.]

Yet President Bush has actually proposed an 18 percent cut in 2009 in our aid agency’s negligible spending for maternal and child care abroad. Family planning, which reduces pregnancies and thus also prevents both abortions and maternal deaths, is perennially starved for funds.

What better way to repair America’s standing in the world than a major initiative on behalf of women hemorrhaging to death in remote villages — paid for by, say, two weeks’ spending in Iraq? Working with Britain and Norway, the two global leaders on this issue, we could together save 300,000 women’s lives a year.

That truly would be a noble legacy of this campaign debate about gender and politics.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.

Beware Deep Love

Oh, the irony. Modern love comes to Malaysia.

Thursday June 12, 2008

Family life shattered by ‘Deep Love’

I AM a doctor who has been married for 28 years, and have two adorable sons.

In October 2006, I was diagnosed with early stage cancer. During this period my wife got involved with a Nepali security guard half her age, who enrolled her as a member of a group called “Deep Love”.

Members of this group are made of security guards, restaurant and casual workers, mostly immigrant workers from Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

They work in the vicinity of Ampang Hilir and the Ampang area in Kuala Lumpur. Each member, whether male or female, is referred to as “dear brother sweet life”.

They normally begin with telephone conversations late into the night. Eventually, this will lead to love, lust and physical contact.

The women involved are brain washed to hate their husbands, rob them of large amounts of cash and eventually demand for a divorce.

They even bring these men into their homes under the pretext of employing them as security guards. They also use prominent religious figures like “Amma” and “Baba,” and prayers as an excuse to be out with these men late at night.

I am a victim of the group. I have been treated for cancer and am free from it but my family life is shattered. I am still working and my sons are with me. My wife, after being drained of her finances, is back with me.

CHEATED HUSBAND,

Ampang, Selangor.

And I thought that was just called "a good fuck".

Get A Real Virtual Life

Kids, if you get yourself a virtual job, will your parents still get mad at you for sitting in your room on the computer all day?

And if you become a virtual race car driver, will they still yell at you for trying to kill yourself?

In Case You Were Feeling Lonely On The Internets

You can make virtual friends! With pixelated versions of animated humans who inhabit other websites...and then you can chat!

Wow! My eyes have been opened to the whole wide, wild virtual world!

WOW Killer Kills WOW

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Dubai & Inspiration

Dubai moves even more enthusiastically into the future.

What I did Saturday night.

...And Buskers Should All Be This Badass

GroovyGrooves.com - The Grooviest Dancing, Singing, and Musician Videos

TV Gets Pwned

For fuck's sake! I've been saying that the technology shouldn't dictate the form of the entertainment since, like, 2003.

Finally, finally, people with money are starting to catch on.

I Wish All Graffiti Was This Awesome!

Can I embed this? On my brain?

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Thanks for the intro, Mariano. And the reminder, Jim.

Planting a Soul Patch

Fuck yeah! The beginnings of conscious, renewable energy consumption that will prevent developing energy-heavy networks from destroying the precious environment (human and otherwise) in which they exist.