Blogs are like any other form of media. Once they challenge values of the dominant class or societal group, they are often censored. This is mostly the case when you talk about politics. Blogger arrests have hit a record high.
More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments, says a report.
Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report.
In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed.
More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report.
The first time I’ve heard the term ‘green noise’ was today, in this NY Times article about how environmentally conscious consumers are beseiged by a great deal of information on how to lead an eco-friendly life. Are we having too much information about the environment? What’s the solution? Who is right?
Ms. Burnham, 35, recycles religiously, orders weekly from a
community-supported farm, buys eco-friendly cleaning products and
carries groceries in a canvas bag. But she admits to information
overload on the environment — from friends, advice columns, news media,
even government-issued reports. Much of the advice is conflicting.
“To
say that you are confused and a little fed up with the often
contradictory messages out there on how to live lightly on the earth is
definitely not cool,” she said in an e-mail message. “But, heck, I’ll
come out and say it. I’m a little overwhelmed.”
She is, in other
words, a victim of “green noise” — static caused by urgent, sometimes
vexing or even contradictory information played at too high a volume
for too long.
The NY Times has an interesting article on female sexuality, which one researcher refers to a continuum between heteosexuality and homosexuality:
Heterosexual women, Dr. Chivers and her colleagues found, were no more excited by athletic naked men doing yoga or tossing stones into the ocean than they were by the control footage: long pans of the snowcapped Himalayas. When straight women viewed a video of a naked woman doing calisthenics, on the other hand, their blood flow increased significantly.
What really matters to women, Dr. Chivers said, at least in the somewhat artificial setting of watching movies while intimately hooked up to a device called a photoplethysmograph, is not the gender of the actor, but the degree of sensuality.
Man: Where have you been all my life?
Woman: Hiding from you.
Man: Haven’t I seen you someplace before?
Woman: Yes, that’s why I don’t go there anymore.
Man: Is this seat empty?
Woman: Yes, and this one will be if you sit down.
Man: Your place or mine?
Woman: Both. You go to yours, and I’ll go to mine.
Man: So, what do you do for a living?
Woman: I’m a female impersonator.
Man: Hey baby, what’s your sign?
Woman: Do not enter.
Man: How do you like your eggs in the morning?
Woman: Unfertilized.
Man: Your body is like a temple.
Woman: Sorry, there are no services today
Man: I would go to the end of the world for you.
Woman: But would you stay there?
Man: If I could see you naked, I’d die happy.
Woman: If I saw you naked, I’d probably die laughing.
Man: If I could rearrange the alphabet I’d put u and i together
Woman: Really, I’d put f and u together
Russia’s Expobank recently released a calendar featuring its femail employees in scantily clad lingerie, leaving little to the imagination. The awesome thing is that these women are absolutely gorgeous. Why are they working in banks? They could definitely be doing some lucrative modeling work.
And this culture of getting office women to pose in revealing attire. I do like because I enjoy seeing beautiful women, especially those comfortable with themselves. It’s a little different from getting professional models to do up adverts. Sexist? Nah…. it doesn’t feel that way to me.
The women, aged between 20 and 33, peeled off to reveal an unexpected side to the world of commerce, with their pictures accompanied by provocative slogans doubling as advertising messages.
The models include the bank’s chief economist for super-rich VIP clients, Anna Pogodina (Miss March), and her boss, Julia Kovyneva (Miss April), who is sprawled across a bed. Senior manager Maria Guterman begins the year with her modesty protected by only a tray of cakes. (source)
SurveillanceSaver is a screensaver which shows live images of over 400 network surveillance cameras worldwide. Yep, when your computer is idle you’ll get to see a live feed of what’s going on in other parts of the world. It’s quite fascinating because of the voyeuristic element involved but also surreal because it compresses time-space.
Something is happening right at the moment elsewhere and you are a witness to it. It is real but since it’s only an image, you tend to question its verity a little more than what you see with your eyes. Sometimes I can’t bear to look away from the screen because I’m always expecting something to happen just that moment, maybe a car accident or a cute girl would enter into the frame.
It’s these thoughts that make this screensaver (and surveillance) quite an intriguing process.
Download Links
1. OS X version
2. Windows Version
Since I’m running a Windows setup, I installed the screensaver for a test. Ran a check and there weren’t any spyware or viruses. Everytime the screensaver runs, it shows a different image. It cycles through the cameras so you can actually sit down at your desk and look at multiple cities/locations at once.
I really like that fact that city, location and longitude/latitude is included in the bottom of the screensaver. The images aren’t very clear and some of them are difficult to see in the night but most of them are rather interesting. You’ll get to see traffic stops, shopping malls, residences, playgrounds, pools, churches and backyards.
It’s definitely a lot more interesting than the usual screensavers, especially when you get to see people walking around and doing stuff.
Here are some examples of images you’ll see through the cameras:
With colourful make-up of bright yellows, startling whites and rich earth-reds, flamboyant accessories and extraordinarily elaborate decorations, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the designs in these images originated in the fevered mind of some leading fashionista. Yet far from the catwalks of New York, London or Paris, these looks are the sole creation of the Surma and Mursi tribes of East Africa’s Omo Valley.
Inspired by the wild trees, exotic flowers and lush vegetation of the
area bordering Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan, these tribal people have
created looks that put the most outlandish creations of Western catwalk
couturiers to shame.
Out of Africa: The incredible tribal fashion show inspired by Mother Nature
The New York Times has a fascinating story about Japan’s Lost and Found culture… apparently small lost and found centers exist all over Japan which allow citizens to return things they found on the street to the recipient. It’s interesting because $23 million in cash was returned to a lost and found center in 2002. Talk about about a civics lesson.
Anywhere else perhaps, a shiny cellphone fallen on the backseat of
a taxi, a nondescript umbrella left leaning against a subway door, a
wad of cash dropped on a sidewalk, would be lost forever, the owners
resigned to the vicissitudes of big city life. But here in
Tokyo, with 8 million people in the city and 33 million in the
metropolitan area, these items and thousands more would probably find
their way to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Lost and Found Center. In a
four-story warehouse, hundreds of thousands of lost objects are
meticulously catalogued according to the date and location of
discovery, and the information put in a database.
Link to full article
One hundred and sixty-five eminent thinkers, researchers, and communicators, at the annual request of the edge.org website, answered the following question: “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?” Many of the names here are well known to the interested public—the physicist Freeman Dyson, the “genome decoder” Craig Venter, the biologist Richard Dawkins (author of the controversial book The God Delusion), the Nobel laureate physicist Leon Lederman. Other participants, such as actor Alan Alda or the musician Brian Eno, may be surprising departures, but are just as interesting. And there are a number of science journalists, as well, including Steve Connor of the Independent, Roger Highfield of the Telegraph, and Philip Campbell, editor of Nature. The following are some examples of the ideas that they are re-evaluating.
History Shows That Famous Thinkers Also Get It Wrong. And they admit it
Source: Andy Singer’s No Exit.
