Month: August 2009

Extended warranty. First day on the job.

So me and Wakaba were discussing the finer points of Family Guy references when she pointed out that the crack I have on my Macbook might be covered by extended warranty. I’d like to think that the gaffers tape I’m using lends my laptop a certain patina – an anti-shine of cool – but called Apple up just to check. Turns out that I qualify for a replacement so what the hell, might as well prolong the life of my beloved companion.

I think that the support drone at Apple had just started working there. He was adorable: Nervous as hell, he was humming under his breath before deciding on which line on his screen to read. There was silence ten seconds at the time and I imagined a guy who frantically is reminding himself “Don’t read the stage notes aloud, don’t read the stage notes aloud!”

He exuded a fear akin to the one you might experience when you’re being asked a question you’re supposed to know the answer to, mumbling something in response that might or not sound like something that maybe possibly is in the vicinity of a vague statement resembling an answer.

— Of course I remember your eye colour, baby; It’s brueen.

He hesitated on every word and only sounded confident reading whole sentences verbatim. “I would like you to know that we have extensive support available on our homepage” was the one time he didn’t finish a sentence with a question mark. Plainly adorable, like a puppy fighting a blanket.

Regnbage_over_Grona_Vallen

Michael Jackson Ganglia Assembly

You know that one time that you and a friend showed up for a marathon and realised too late that you’ve signed up for a competition for “special children” but can’t really back out cause you might win the chocolate trophy; Besides you already paid the fee and have running shoes on? Well, Bustler and Archinect ran a Michael Jackson Monument Design competition and the entries are now available for voting on, and they’re of mixed quality.

Some contenders didn’t bother to look up “monument” in the dictionary but lept straight for the lens flare filter, while others did cute conceptual pieces. A few are good: Permanently exploding atom bomb Michael Jackson and Anti-terrorist Golden Statue with Lasers go for the humour. Lift & Slide is the only installation which seems thought through and MJ Sperm Bank is cute, but the rest are mostly photoshops of Michaels feet and the moon.

MJ_Anti_terroris_gold

MJ_nanobot

Go vote for my anti-cancer nano-glove. Let the others get their “You’re also super!” diplomas. I want that chocolate trophy and special groupies.

Your backfat is encroaching on my private space!

They scratch their balls, take up your elbowroom and eat crisps with their face halfway down the bag. They keep their knees wide and their coats on should you be tempted to steal the smelly Canada Goose. Their cellphones are never muted and they let it ring instead of denying a call. They look at you over the rim of their Dan Brown novels with blank, unblinking eyes.

I had a perfectly good seat on the train back from Stockholm, but traded with a girl who wanted to sit next to her friend. I should have checked where she was seated before accepting. I spent two hours composing a diatribe against my new neighbours. I went over the top and felt rather judgmental afterwards, but fuck it, I was riding backwards which always makes me want to vomit and sleep at the same time. Minge minge.

atombombmoln

If wet, in a library.

There’s a debate on assisted suicide up on Metafilter, brought about by an article by writer Terry Pratchett. I’ve posted on suicide before, but this is more about terminally ill and suffering people and the battle for the right to decide when to go that some of them are waging. My mom brought up the subject in connection to her own mother being very ill and suffering the worst of old age right now. I don’t know how I would handle the request if someone would ask me.

Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and is writing the article from the perspective of someone who will be horribly sick before dying. It’s well worth ten minutes of your time. Memento mori, and so on.

As an author, I’ve always tended to be known only to a circle of people – quite a large one, I must admit – who read books. I was not prepared for what happened after I ‘came out’ about having Alzheimer’s in December 2007, and appeared on television. People would stop me in the street to tell me their mother had it, or their father had it. Sometimes, it’s both parents, and I look into their eyes and I see a flash of fear. In London the other day, a beefy man grabbed my arm, smiled at me and said, ‘Thanks a lot for what you’re doing, my mum died from it,’ and disappeared into the crowd.

→ Daily Mail, Terry Pratchett: I’ll die before the endgame [Via: Metafilter]

Sorry for the plums: Euthanasia & houseboats.

For the first time in a while we ended up having a “normal” dinner with mom. She was with her boyfriend and my brother brought his girlfriend. (I brought a retarded smile) We ended up discussing curtains, salaries and euthanasia. We left with a big bag of plums and apples, plucked from very ripe trees.

sang_hos_jonas

mateusz_retard

We’re heading to Copenhagen with Skup Palet. We’re still not decided on the details of our presence, although our involvement is clear – we’re going to represent ourselves, and with that an alternative mode of art organisation; Most of the other people there are either going to be presenting their galleries and publications, or they have a common goal.

There’s nine of us in the org. Our only common denominator is also the lowest one – facilitate the creation of whatever it is that its individual members are interested in. I think someone wants to invite speakers, someone else print a book. Most of us want to make money on doing art, not an easy proposition under the best of circumstances.

With the thoughts about career that have popped into my mind as of late, there is also the question of place. I’ve entertained the idea that now might be the time for me to move somewhere where I’d be alone, spend some time reading the books that are mostly gathering dust and maybe use the laptop for stuff other than occasional bloggery and Internet pop culture. Y’know, learn things or something. It’s all very hazy.

Chalk this ambition up to whatever category of delusions are common for frustrated people. None of my friends that I’ve asked about this have been supportive. Three of them have independent of each other said that I’d literally go insane should I go into seclusion. And not just in a “oh hey it’s kinda boring here in the forest” insane but rather “let’s smear faeces on the walls and pray to the moon godess.” I take it they mean I am a city person.

Petter is talking about buying a boat and such talk sparks ideas of getting a houseboat or sailing around the world. (By the way, once you’ve gone around the world, where else is there to go? What modality of existence or nature haven’t you experienced?) But beyond nurturing escapist fantasies too grandiose to fulfil, what is a manboy to do?

byggnader_sthlm

tomasz_flin

I was looking at bikes with Jonas the other day, and it struck me that I’d like to have more money. Hey, there you go, an ambition! I hardly recognised it it’s been so long! So part of this ambition would be to find a niche where I’m happy enough and make enough money and progress to support myself.

So photography maybe? My brother and I are once again talking about the possibility of going freelance as a reporting team, but the exact details of financing the project are still in need of some ironing. As far as I know it would entail us living out of a car. Well, whatever. Let’s start with updating the homepage, then we take Berlin.

Stabby stabby!

From Chopper, an odd Australian flick. This beautiful scene summarises the whole movie quite well. Now you don’t have to watch it. Not that it’s bad, it just doesn’t go anywhere.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/chopper_stab.flv https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/chopper_stab.png 640 355]

Guys are in a tight spot because in very real terms, we have nothing they want. They on the other hand, have vaginas. They can make us do pretty much what ever they want. I don’t see anything wrong with guys trying to learn some tricks of their own.

→ Penny-Arcade: Discussion about the seduction community

The business of business

Midsommar-trad-slapljus

Sony releases two new ebook readers, which I’m unnaturally enthusiastic about (if you live in the Americas – where the streets flow with milk and honey – I’d appreciate one of these) and in the article over at New York times one of the publishers is brooding about the (reduced!) costs of doing business in the digital age.

Their plan is to wait with digital copies of books so that fans can spend money on buying the hardcover version first. See, because the strategy to delay DVD sales until the cinema screenings have milked the marked has really worked out swell for the movie industry. How come these people still have a job to go to? They must have heard of OCR and rabid fans typing up new books, right?

In response to the $9.99 list price, some publishers are thinking about postponing the release of the digital versions of their most popular books, lengthening the period in which only the higher-priced hardcover versions are available. This is similar to the approach taken by Hollywood studios, which allow DVD sales and rentals only after a film has left theaters.

→ New York Times, Brad Stone: Sony to Cut E-Book Prices and Offer New Readers

To help budding entrepreneurs avoid these traps, I also identified the three key elements that go into a successful business plan: a logical statement of a problem and its solution; a battery of cold, hard evidence; and candor about the risks, gaps and other assumptions that might be proved wrong.

→ Wall Street Journal, John W. Mullins: Why business plans don’t deliver

Pasting is the new writing. DNA wants to be free!

astrid_martin_sara

In the age of cheap facts, we now inhabit a world where knowing something is possible is practically the same as knowing how to do it. This means that invention is now a lot more like collage than like discovery.

→ Locus online, Cory Doctorow: Cheap facts and plausible premise

“We make this look really simple,” Tobias said. “For us to get here is not so simple. But how long it takes us isn’t the issue because once you’ve figured out how to make something simple, a 15-year-old kid can replicate it… That’s why we’re being so careful about [the details].”

→ Threat Level, Kim Zetter: Electronic High-Security Locks Easily Defeated at DefCon [ Previously ]

Sputnik Observatory is a New York not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the study of contemporary culture. We fulfill this mission by documenting, archiving, and disseminating ideas that are shaping modern thought by interviewing leading thinkers in the arts, sciences and technology from around the world. Our philosophy is that ideas are NOT selfish, ideas are NOT viruses. Ideas survive because they fit in with the rest of life. Our position is that ideas are energy, and should interconnect and re-connect continuously because by linking ideas together we learn, and new ideas emerge.

→ SPTNK.org

kossor_med_flugor

One team of scientists is looking to modify the bacteria in our mouths, so that instead of developing plaque, they’re eating away at it and recalcifying our teeth. An inter-institutional collaboration called SynBERC is creating “tumor-killing bacteria” that hunt and destroy tumor cells based on biological markers. However, it’s tricky to work on these sorts of things right now, because there are so many societal hangups around introducing organisms into people.

→ SEED Magazine, Greg Boustead: The biohacking hobbyist

She’s got a DNA “thermocycler” bought on eBay for $59, and an incubator made by combining a styrofoam box with a heating device meant for an iguana cage. A few months ago, she talked about her hobby on DIY Bio, a Web site frequented by biohackers, and her work was noted in New Scientist magazine.

→ Wall Street Journal, Jeanne Whalen: In attics and closets, “biohackers” discover their inner Frankenstein

Simplify you life with gene synthesis! Improve codon usage and get more protein, introduce several mutation in one go! Order your gene online and concentrate on research – not on cloning!
Mr. Gene’s online codon usage optimization software allows you to design, analyze and order your gene online. Gene synthesis at your fingertips. Due to high automatisation and by acquiring excess capacities from OEM gene manufactures around the world, Mr. Gene can offer the best prices on the market.

→ MrGene.com

It is an overwhelming task. “The human genome,” Rienhoff says, “is still a wilderness.” Despite all the well-publicized advances of the past two decades, precious little is known about the genetic variants that cause even the most common maladies, to say nothing of the rare, sometimes one-of-a-kind diseases that afflict children like Beatrice. As a result, up to 40 percent of special-needs kids will never receive a precise diagnosis. “It’s agonizing to have a child with a degenerative disease and not even be able to figure out what it is or what’s causing it or what the course of it will be,”

→ WIRED, Brendan I. Koerner: DIY DNA: One Father’s Attempt to Hack His Daughter’s Genetic Code

This Vegan Life: Suck it, porkie!

grilltermometer

It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.

→ American Dietetic Association: Vegetarian diets

One should always be wary of talking of “the last remaining form of discrimination.” If we have learnt anything from the liberation movements, we should have learnt how difficult it is to be aware of latent prejudice in our attitudes to particular groups until this prejudice is forcefully pointed out.

→ Peter Singer: All animals are equal

You reviewed Rattling the Cage in the Yale Law Journal, and while you were critical of Wise’s argument that the law should recognize chimpanzees and other great apes as legal persons, your tone was respectful, and you took his argument seriously. That has encouraged me to attempt to persuade you that—for I am an ethicist, not a lawyer—there is a sound ethical case for changing the status of animals

→ Slate: Animal rights – Debate between Peter Singer & Richard Posner