Tiphareth's friends (former)

Динамо продукт тоталитаризма?
Возмутила вчерашняя вечреняя программ по РТР - на протяжении 30 минут... столько я застал... меня убеждали в точ, что мой любимый клуб, созданный по инициативе Дзержинского, ответственен за сталинские чистки и прочие происки "кровавой гебни"... Сванидзе - автор и ведущий долго рассказывал об отсидке Николая Старостина... Вася Аксенов подпездывал: болеть за Спартак значило идти против системы...
Какой-то дядечка рассказал, как в 50-е годы на футболе на трибуне поднялся мужчина и заявил: Те, кто болеют за Спартак, - сидели, сидят и будут сидеть... Вот это мне понравилось...

((((((((((((
Жду сигнала, знака.
Волшебство должно появиться. Оно есть. Я знаю!!!!!!!!!!!
Почему же оно прячется. (((((((((((((((((((
Потому что хорошее всегда трудно видеть.((((((((((((((((((((
На глаза лезет только мразь!!!!!!!!(((((((((((((((((((
Мамашин козел был пойман за подглядыванием в душ. КОЗЕЛ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(((((((((((((((

странности переселения
Как известно, одним из пунктиков демократов была дискредитация Севера. Развернулась бешеная пропаганда насчёт того, что-де приличному человеку на Севере и жить-то невозможно и что всех оставшихся приличных надо переселить в приличные места. И даже (видимо, в силу своего всем известного человеколюбия) начали переселять. И даже, говорят, деньги(!) под это дело какие-то выделили (которые, к счастью, никто так и не увидел).
Удивительно (на фоне этой кампании), что никто почему-то даже не заикнулся о ликвидации Санкт-Петербурга. Хотя город не просто северный, а ещё и заболоченный (бр-р-р). Чего бы начать массовое переселение петербуржцев, скажем, куда-нибудь в Азов? Так нет, даже всё порывались туда опять столицу перенести!
Кто их поймёт, этих демократов!

Бисмарк подсуетился
Пока славянофилы грезили об объединении всего славянства вкупе со всем мировым православием под эгидой русского царя, Бисмарк на практике осуществил этот проект в рамках немецкой ойкумены. А Гитлер потом полностью завершил это дело через аншлюс Австрии.

признаки конца
Помните, какой продукт первым пострадал от горбачёвщины?
Им была... аджика!
Возможно, далеко не все были поклонниками сего замечательного продукта-вырви-глаз, расфасованного в майонезные баночки, о котором можно сказать, что то было дёшево и сердито. И валялись эти баночки, часто с тронутой ржавчиной крышками, грудами в магазинах, поскольку их производство явно превышало спрос.
И вдруг они... исчезли. Разом. Как корова слизнула с прилавков.
Потом долгое время под видом благородной аджики как торговки, так и в магазинах предлагали какую-то жалкую пародию из томатов и чуть-чуть перца.
И вот недавно появилась "Аджика по-грузински" (домодедовского разлива). И хочется воскликнуть (вслед за рекламой): тот самый чай!
А это, наверное, ещё один из признаков того, что перестройке п...дец.

Ой, зря я это запостил: Онищенко узнает и аджику запретит. Даже домодедовскую.

yan
Еще одна фотография, сделанная на нашей кухне.
Сегодня. То есть, уже вчера.

yan

( - . - )

A Play of White
Vogue Italia May 2006
A Play of White
Tim Walker

( Read more... )

Пидорасы 2: пидорасы возвращаются
А гэй-парад оказывается состоялся не где-либо, не в "зажравшейся и развращенной" Маааскве, а в Северной столице русского фашизма - в Санкт-Петербурге.

На сцене, сооруженной без ведома администрации прихода Св. Екатерины, в течение всего вечера устраивались грязные танцы и пошлые представления с участием раздетых женщин и трансвеститов, оскорбляющие не только чувства верующих, пришедших на богослужение, но и всех порядочных горожан, пришедших на праздник с детьми.

Да, да, язык возмущенной общественности достоин журнала "Работница". Ну ладно уж там, фанаты ФК "Зенит", которые, видимо, в условиях городской гегемонии настолько обленились, обросли животами, что им влом даже устроить пидорас-сафари ;) Но почему РПЦ и Православные Фофудьеносцы не пресекли этого бесчинства? Ответ прост - пьяные гомосексуалисты обоссали крыльцо католического храма, этого самого св. Катерины! Полагая, что православная общественность довольно потирает ручки, празднуя позор древнего врага. Мне-то лично совершенно похуй - я бы под хорошим шафе и католический обоссал и православный. И мечеть бы до кучи обоссал и синагогу. Выссав фигурно цифру 93. Но меня искренне удивляет почему иерархи РПЦ, Православные Фофудьеносцы и, скажем, активисты ЕСМ не ссали на богомерзкое католическое крыльцо вместе с пидорасами, с криками "Смерть Западу! Смерть НАТО! Слава Ымперии!". Налицо слабая организация антинатовской коалиции... Впрочем, с другой стороны не исключаю варианта, что Православные Фофудьеносцы и активисты ЕСМ и были переодетыми гэями, совершали антизападную ымперскую акцию в условиях строгой конспирации...
( Read more... )

эмотикон: проект
Интересно, уже есть такой?

(:=

Fhtagn!

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Beirut: Gulag Orkestar

The Wowserocracy vs. video games

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/31#1849_videogame

In Australia, there is no R rating for video games, and hence all video and computer games deemed unsuitable for children are illegal (either that or are shoehorned into the suitable-for-teenage-mooks MA category; after all, commerce is commerce); it is a similar situation to what existed with comic books in the US in the days of the Comics Code Authority and the red scare. 88% of Australians want a R rating introduced, recognising that video games aren't merely childrens' entertainment; however, it's not likely to happen any time soon, because a devoutly religious, ultra-conservative state attorney-general holds the power of veto:

In order to change the current regime by introducing a classification bill before parliament, all nine state and federal attorneys-general must agree unanimously to the proposal for an R18+ games rating.

South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson opposes the introduction of an R18+ classification for games which would bring interactive entertainment in line with other media like films and publications.

An R rating would give the OFLC a lot more flexibility when dealing with borderline decisions like the recent controversial banning of Marc Ecko's Getting Up as well as sending a much stronger message to parents that not all games are suitable for children.

Singapore is the only other Western country in the world not to have an R classification for games.

I suspect that Atkinson isn't the only attorney-general who would veto a R rating. The federal government is quite close to the religious right, and I believe has previously opposed any moves that would Send The Wrong Message by legalising adults-only games.

(And is Singapore really a "Western country" by any criterion? It's in south-east Asia, more Confucian than European in philosophy, somewhat authoritarian, and not, strictly speaking, a functioning liberal democracy. Though, being also descended from the institutions of the British Empire, it could be a model for a more orderly, efficient Australia.)

¶ [no comments]

Benedict XVI in Auschwitz

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/31#1640_sidious

Pope Benedict XVI, the first German-born pope, recently visited Auschwitz. However, his remarks there have left a bad taste:

He stood in the extermination camp where millions died, but he did not utter the word "anti-Semitism", he did not offer an apology on behalf of Germany or the Church, he said nothing about the silence of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi years, nor did he, the former member of the Hitler Youth, offer any sort of account of his own dawning awareness of the horror created by the people democratically elected to rule his country.

The Holocaust, then, according to Benedict, was only incidentally the extermination of the Jews. The true goal was the extermination of God and Christianity. So the German people were the Nazis' victims, used and abused by them, and Christians and Christianity even more so. In Ratzinger's Christo-centric vision, the Jews find themselves bit players - bystanders at their own extermination. The true victim was a metaphysical one.

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The Perfect Man

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/31#0154_perfectma

There is a rather good hard-scifi story at Salon: "The Perfect Man" by Lauren McLaughlin. It's about a woman who has a virtual AI boyfriend made to order, who then transforms from adorably bumbling Hugh Grant-esque Hollywood Englishman stereotype to sinister, inscrutably calculating Hollywood Englishman stereotype:

The design process is easy. First step: Pick a physical template. A youth squandered on Monty Python reruns left me with a full-blown kink for English guys, so I chose a template called "Nigel" -- think Michael Palin crossed with Laurence Olivier. Then, to assure he didn't look overdesigned, I clicked the "random factor" option to introduce "lifelike imperfections."

If you want to know anything about the "human" rights travesty currently under way courtesy of draconian anti-AI laws, there's a whole subculture of liberationists ready to lecture you on it. They've got the skinny on behavioral inhibitors, recursive self-teaching limiters and other artifacts of AI "slavery." For my purposes, what it all boiled down was this: snip Pritchard's inhibitors or resign myself to dating a functionary. Do you want to date a functionary? Me neither. Thankfully, for every Webcop dutifully guarding the behavioral inhibitors of the thousands of AIs cropping up on the Web, there's a black market geek with the tools to snip.

Now that I have my sanity back, I must dive deep into the black waters of her soul, excavate her most primal desires, and do what no human male has been able to do: keep her interested in me. Thankfully, I have one freedom human males do not -- the freedom to redesign myself. I can make myself so fascinated by Lucy that all I want to do is watch her, study her. A nip here, a tuck there, and voilà, I'm in love with the girl. Well, not in love, exactly. Love is still an alien concept. But I have made myself a bit of a stalker. And the more information I gather about my lovely little monkey, the more I can adjust my personality to suit her needs. Heck, I could turn myself into Prince Charming if I wanted. Something tells me that would not tickle Lucy's fancy. In fact, the more I learn about Lucy, the more I realize she doesn't know what she wants at all. She only thinks she knows. No, Lucy's desires are my nut to crack. And crack it I will. Or she'll crack me. Oh, I don't mean to sound morbid. I'm incapable of morbid thoughts. To mitigate the persistent fear of being snuffed, I've given myself a devil-may-care attitude about death. That way I can focus my energies more intensely on Lucy.

Of course she doesn't know the contents of her subconscious. She lacks the processing power to unravel it. It's a number-crunching job, that's all. Humans, with your lovely little wet brains, will never achieve the self-knowledge you so desire.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ [no comments]

iRiver MTP U-turn

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/29#2019_iriver

iRiver, the Korean MP3 player manufacturer started off making players that were USB mass storage devices; in other words, when plugged into a computer, they looked like a hard disk you could copy MP3 files to, which the device could then play. A while ago, seemingly persuaded by Microsoft, they abandoned this and replaced it with something called MTP, a proprietary Microsoft protocol for transferring audio files, which officially only works with Windows Media Player (sorry, Maccies and Penguinheads!). Now they seem to have realised the error of their ways (perhaps spurred on by other player makers, such as iAudio, proudly advertising that their devices look like standard USB hard drives that work with anything), and released a firmware update which lets users choose which USB protocol their player uses; for some of their players, at least.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ [3 comments]

Irrepressible.info

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/29#1138_irrepress

Amnesty International has started a campaign against internet repression. Named irrepressible.info, the campaign targets authoritarian/totalitarian regimes like Cuba, China, Iran and the friendly, open-for-business United Arab Emirates, which censor material the regime disapproves of, monitor the internet and jail dissidents, often with the help of compliant western companies like Yahoo!. There are resources detailing the extent of internet-based repression in various corners of the world, as well as a pledge to sign, which will be presented at a UN conference in November:

In November 2006, governments and companies from all over the world will attend a UN conference to discuss the future of the Internet. You can help us send a clear message to them that people everywhere believe the Internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression.

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The 108-year War Tax

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/26#1815_wartax

The final chapter of the Spanish-American War is about to close, as the US Treasury Department prepares to eliminate a tax on telephone calls imposed to fund the war back in 1898 (back when telephones were a luxury item). It only took the bureaucracy 108 years, two world wars and the rise and fall of the Soviet bloc (not to mention the Spanish Civil War, the rise and fall of Franco's Fascism and Spain's accession into the US-allied NATO alliance, a mere 24 years earlier) to acknowledge that they are no longer at war with Spain.

(via Gizmodo) ¶ [1 comment]

The egg came first

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/26#1639_chicknegg

Philosophers have solved one of the great conundra, the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg. The answer: the egg came first, even if you implicitly exclude non-chicken eggs:

Genetic material does not change during an animal's life. Therefore, the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must first have existed as an embryo inside an egg.

Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, who was put to work on the dilemma, said that the pecking order was perfectly clear: the living organism inside the eggshell would have the same DNA as the chicken that it would become.

Of course, the conclusion is not entirely indisputable, especially in the non-reality-based community:

Creationists, for example, will argue that if God created Adam and Eve, he probably had a spare five minutes to knock up a chicken as well.

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C30 C60 C86 Go!

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/26#1227_c86

Another article on C86, the lo-fi indie compilation that's 20 years old this week, this time on the Sweeping The Nation blog.

Meanwhile, Berlin C86-influenced indiepop label Firestation Records, or perhaps Firestation Tower Records, (they're the ones who released the "Sounds of Leamington Spa" compilation CDs of late-1980s British indie-pop single releases, as well as various album rereleases from the same milieu) have released a compilation that could well be C06. Of course, they didn't have the gall to call it that, so it just has the rather generic title of "New British Invasion", and includes bands like The Pipettes and Vincent Vincent and the Villains, rather than the more generic and commercial Carling-indie that NME would have filled up any official C06™ with.

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UK to legalise FM transmitters

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/26#1011_fmtransm

The British government is finally considering legalising low-power FM transmitters, of the sort used to transmit sound from MP3 players to FM radios. In the UK, anything that transmits on licensed frequencies (such as those used for FM radio), at any power level whatsoever, requires a licence from the Secretary of State; (In contrast, in the US, it is legal to use transmitters below a certain power level without a licence.) With the popularity of iPods and their ilk, the law hasn't been enforced as rigorously as it might be; the devices started appearing quite openly in shops on Tottenham Court Road a year or two ago, with the retailers, when questioned, hemming and hawing about the legality of using them.

Any change in the law to legalise the devices will require them to "meet strict technical standard to minimize interference to other radio users". Presumably these will include making them robustly unmodifiable to prevent them from being adapted into high-power FM transmitters, which are in demand by the large numbers of pirate radio stations across the UK.

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Japanese war tubas

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/25#1603_wartubas

Japanese War Tubas. I repeat, Japanese War Tubas:

Seen on this page. The war tubas look like a musical instrument (some kind of Dadaist/Futurist sound-art device, or perhaps a super-loud military-band instrument designed to strike terror into the hearts of enemies, much as bagpipes were), but they were actually devices for acoustically locating incoming aircraft. I wouldn't be surprised if the photograph in question has graced at least one CD of experimental music/noise-art.

(via The Athanasius Kircher Society) ¶ [no comments]

Dual-use technologies

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/25#1143_teenbuzz

The street finds its own uses for ultrasonic teenager repellants; now some enterprising hoodie-wearing troublemakers have apparently sampled them into mobile phone ringtones inaudible to teachers and authority figures, allowing them to text each other and organise happy-slapping parties and such in class with the teachers remaining none the wiser. Or so the Metro (a throwaway tabloid given out on public transport in the UK) says:

Schoolchildren have recorded the sound, which they named Teen Buzz, and spread it from phone to phone via text messages and Bluetooth technology.

A secondary school teacher in Cardiff said: 'All the kids were laughing about something, but I didn't know what. They know phones must be turned off during school. They could all hear somebody's phone ringing but I couldn't hear a thing.

I'm somewhat skeptical about this. Wouldn't the MP3 format's psychoacoustic compression algorithms wreak havoc with subtleties such as ultrasonic tones?

Anyway, I wonder how long until the Teen Buzz sound is heard in grime records, making the first form of teenage music that's actually (partly) inaudible to elders.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ [1 comment]

MC Dicko in da hizzouse!

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/24#2356_mcdicko

MC Dicko could be the next Icy Hot Stuntaz. He's an 8-year-old gangsta rapper from Chester (that's in the north of England), who busts rhymes (in a very loose sense of the word) about how "bitches and ho's" have been fucking him over (which, I imagine, is wigga-speak for "girls have cooties" or something), between recounting the occasional ghetto gunfight (which may have happened in his imagination, or be a true story from the X-Box ghetto) and thugged-up versions of primary-school arguments. Sample lyric: "Shoot the fuckin' wannabe wiggas bitch".

Listen to the first two songs. Then, when you've picked yourself up from the floor and stopped laughing, listen to the third track, "Biscuits Skit", a rap about eating biscuits, and behold a world of improvement (for one, he actually bothers to rhyme rather than just rant angrily about fantasy battles, and does a very competent job). I imagine that when he drops the derivative gangstaisms and develops his own voice, he could go a long way.

(via Bowlie) ¶ [1 comment]

Daniel Gilbert on happiness

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/24#1918_gilbert

More on the subject of happiness and its exact nature: Edge.org talks to Daniel Gilbert, a researcher on the subject (he is director of Harvard's Hedonic Psychology Laboratory):

My research with Tim Wilson shows that when people try to simulate future events -- and to simulate their emotional reactions to those events -- they make systematic errors. Modern people take the ability to imagine the future for granted, but it turns out that this is one of our species' most recently acquired abilities -- no more than three million years old. The part of our brain that enables us to simulate the future is one of nature's newest inventions, so it isn't surprising that when we try to use this new ability to imagine our futures, we make some rookie errors. The main error, of course, is that we vastly overestimate the hedonic consequences of any event. Neither positive nor negative events hit us as hard or for as long as we anticipate.

We're all told that variety is the spice of life. But variety is not just over-rated, it may actually have a cost. Research shows that people do tend to seek more variety than they should. We all think we should try a different doughnut every time we go to the shop, but the fact is that people are measurably happier when they have their favorite on every visit -- provided the visits are sufficiently separated in time.

Those last four words are the important ones. If you had to eat 4 donuts in rapid succession, variety would indeed spice up your experience and you'd be wise to seek it. But if you had to eat 4 donuts on 4 separate Mondays, variety would lower your overall enjoyment. The human brain has tremendous difficulty reasoning about time, and thus we tend to seek variety whether the doughnuts are separated by minutes or months.

Even in a technologically sophisticated society, some people retain the romantic notion that human unhappiness results from the loss of our primal innocence. I think that's nonsense. Every generation has the illusion that things were easier and better in a simpler past, but the fact is that things are easier and better today than at any time in human history.

Our primal innocence is what keeps us whacking each other over the head with sticks, and it is not what allows us to paint a Mona Lisa or design a space shuttle. It gives rise to obesity and global warming, not Miles Davis or the Magna Carta. If human kind flourishes rather than flounders over the next thousand years, it will be because we embraced learning and reason, and not because we surrendered to some fantasy about returning to an ancient Eden that never really was.

(via Mind Hacks) ¶ [no comments]

Linux on Palm T3

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/24#1536_linuxt3

These people are porting Linux to the Palm Tungsten. Apparently they now have it running on the T3 and showing a graphical environment (Qtopia or KDE, at a guess, though they don't say).

(via lshift) ¶ [no comments]

General Wellbeing

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2006/05/24#1215_happiness

In an attempt to shed the image of being "the Nasty Party", Britain's Tories have been bending over backwards to espouse un-Tory-like positions, without going so far as to make any concrete promises that might actually adversely affect profits. First they attempted to greenwash themselves with their "go green, vote blue" campaign, and had their charismatic new leader, David Cameron, very publically cycle to his office (with a staffer following discreetly in a car, carrying paperwork); and now, they're borrowing an idea from Bhutan (or at least borrowing its overall appearance) and promising to make national happiness a priority:

In the first of several speeches on families and community, Mr Cameron told a conference organised by Google: "It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB - General Wellbeing.

"It's about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and above all the strength of our relationships. There is a deep satisfaction which comes from belonging to someone and to some place. There comes a point when you can't keep on choosing; you have to commit."

Mr Cameron's speech, seen as an attempt both to distance the party from its Thatcherite past and to underline its portrayal of the chancellor as obsessed with work and regulation, said Britain should "move beyond a belief in the Protestant work ethic alone". But he added that regulation could make business less competitive and that the key was to educate companies and encourage good practice.

Of course, promises are cheap, and policies are another thing. Whether, when push comes to shove, the Tories would translate all their happy talk of leisure and work-life balance into concrete policies that might adversely affect profits (such as, for example, ending Britain's opting out from the European working time directive, which would limit work week lengths, averaged over a period, to an indolently un-Anglo-Saxon 48 hours), or just borrow New Labour's trick of frantically spinning in one direction whilst legislating in the opposite, is another matter.

Meanwhile, the Graun's Nick Pearce argues that focussing on happiness is inherently right-wing and regressive:

Happiness also has little to tell us about some of the most difficult issues of our times. Because it places a particular vision of the good life above procedural fairness, it is largely silent on human rights and constitutional government. It struggles to tell us anything useful about what morally to value in life and has little to say about the red-green agenda of marrying ecological sustainability and social justice concerns.

Happiness is therefore a flexible friend for the political right. It can provide a veneer of radicalism to a project that eschews difficult trade offs and policy choices. In the wrong hands, it appeals to a stressed out, downshifting middle class but speaks less to those suffering the misery of poverty.

¶ [no comments]