29 Jul 2006
Lactivists: Where is it OK to breastfeed?

This is a classic cultural Catch-22: breasts are perceived as sexual because that's the only context in which breasts are displayed. Why aren't they displayed in other contexts? Because they're seen as sexual! Apparently even by breastfeeding women!

Although I daresay that it would take a pretty serious pervert to get aroused by this magazine cover. For a good survey of our collective hangups on mammary glands, see The Book of the Breast by Robert Anton Wilson.

"I was SHOCKED to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine," one person wrote. "I immediately turned the magazine face down," wrote another. "Gross," said a third.

(link) [CNN.com]

12:09 /Politics | 2 comments | permanent link

The New Age: So Big and Healthy Nowadays That Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You

Now this is an interesting article: we're bigger than our ancestors, and we live longer, but why?

I wonder what the results of such a survey on an earlier, more agrarian period. Lot's of the men in this study were immigrants from the crowded cities of the time, right as the industrial revolution got into full swing, and farming was changing, too, from subsistence to cash cropping. I doubt if we have enough records to examine such a era, but it would be fascinating to see the variations.

It is one of the most striking shifts in human existence - a change from small, sickly people to humans who are so robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable.

(link) [New York Times]

11:49 /Home | 2 comments | permanent link

JavaScript opens doors to browser-based attacks

Hmmm... maybe I've been a bit overly optimistic.

Malicious JavaScript embedded in a Web site can let a miscreant map a home or corporate network and attack connected devices.

(link) [CNET News.com]

07:06 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Mel Gibson arrested for DUI

Wonder if he'd been drinking Purple Passions?

Oscar-winning actor and director Mel Gibson was arrested Friday in Malibu, California, and charged with driving under the influence, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office.

(link) [CNN.com]

07:03 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Has Orwell's '1984' Come 22 Years Later?

We're like the frog that being boiled slowly - we won't even notice we're on the menu until we've already been cooked! Reminds me of a bumper sticker I spotted recently "It is as bad and you think, and they are out to get you!" ...

And to answer the rhetorical question posed by Slashdot - it can get a lot worse. And it will, long before it get's any better.

This weekend my mother bought a grille lighter, something like this butane lighter. The self-scanner at Kroger's locked itself up and paged a clerk, who had to enter our drivers license numbers into her kiosk before we could continue. Last week my girlfriend bought four peaches. An alert came up stating that peaches were a restricted item and she had to identify herself before being able to purchase such a decidedly high quantity of the dangerous fruit. My video games spy on me, reporting the applications I run, the websites I visit, the accounts of the people I IM. My ISP is being strong-armed into a two-year archive of each action I take online under the guise of catching pedophiles, the companies I trust to free information are my enemies, the people looking out for me are being watched. As if that weren't enough, my own computer spies on me daily, my bank has been compromised, my phone is tapped--has been for years--and my phone company is A-OK with it. What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs? The sad state of affairs is that Big Brother probably became a quiet part of our lives a lot earlier. The big question now is: how much worse can it get?

(link) [Slashdot]

06:58 /Politics | 2 comments | permanent link

Iranian leader bans usage of foreign words

I wonder if they're going to replace the word "Sharia" with it's Persian equivalent? How about "halal" or "haram"? Oh, wait: those words are "sacred", they're Arabic from the Koran!

The problem here isn't a foreign name for "elastic loaves", it's a lack of elasticity in thinking on the part of the leadership. I wonder if there's a Persian word for "insane, saber-rattling loudmouth"?

AP - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves," state media reported Saturday.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

06:46 /Politics | 7 comments | permanent link