The Bikini Diaries have some wacky stories.#

A woman whose husband left her for her mother was a bridesmaid at their wedding, it has emerged.

Alison Smith discovered her husband, George Greenhowe, 21, in bed with her mother, Pat, 44, just 10 days after their marriage in Angus in November 2001.

The 20-year-old filed for divorce naming her own mother in the papers but then managed to forgive the pair and gave them her blessing to wed.

Kuro5hin has an article about Same sex unions.#

Same sex unions are being debated in the US, with gay rights activists seeking full equality for their unions and conservative groups seeking to halt any attempt to alter the status quo. The crux of the problem is that economic issues are being bound to religious positions, where it is winner take all. This article explores the possibility of finding a compromise that at least minimally satisfies each side in the debate.

Gay rights activists have steadily gained ground in their attempts to legitimize same sex relationships in the eyes of the law in the United States, claiming they are due the same opportunities granted to heterosexual couples. Relatively recent gains include the granting of insurance privileges for partners of gay employees at several corporations and local municipalities. With equal fervor, though perhaps with less success, other groups, primarily associated with fundamentalist Christianity, have attempted to block any such legalization, hoping to maintain the status quo which also happens to fit neatly with their particular world view. The problem is that what is being debated suffers from a mismatch at the fundamental base of each group's arguments.

A great email about Theo DeRaadt.#

Ten Reasons Why photographs a Kung Fu Master.#

Here's a guy in full-on kung fu regalia; he was teaching himself to use his inline skates in the park this weekend. Had I been seconds slower with the camera we would have a pictorial record of the kung fu master busting his ass. Become one with skates, grasshopper!

The Yeti puts it simply how blogging is powerful.#

Blogging is personal publishing writ large. It is not a panacea. It can be petty and banal and puerile. It also can serve as a method of transparency.

The life unexamined is the life not worth living. Blogging gives you a platform to communicate. It's effect on your life is entirely based on how you approach it.

The Yeti misses true love.#

Sometimes I miss the intensity of crazy love. I haven't felt that way in five years. I've loved - certainly - the sweet blissful kind, not the fiery I need that person to breathe kind. Does the weight of being in charge of my life carry the price of never feeling surprised again?

Orson Scott Card writes about copyright.#

So it's pretty hilarious to hear record company executives and movie studio executives get all righteous about copyright. They've been manipulating copyright laws for years, and all the manipulations were designed to steal everything they could from the actual creators of the work.

Do you think these companies care about the money that the actual creators of the work are being deprived of when people copy CDs and DVDs?

Richard thinks luck is bullshit.#

it's by increasing and strengthening one's network that one enhances one's chances (or probabilities) at success. The casinos in Nevada and elsewhere make a killing on people who think that luck has something to do with their winnings, when it's a setup: the house always wins. Might as well flush your money down the toilet. (Same goes for the lottery, but even more so.)

Richard quotes "John Weissenberger and George Koch discuss Scandinavian "northern socialism" and its relationship to the Canadian intellectual elite and sex. "#

Scandinavia had a marked influence on the socio-economic and political thinking of our elites, which ultimately trickled down to society at large. Scandinavian sexual mores have had perhaps the most pervasive legacy, even with the average Canadian. There is the concept of the "Swedish babe" -- tattooed somewhere on the hoser psyche -- the perennial fight over which ABBA babe was hotter and the hoary jokes about busloads of stranded Swedish stewardesses.

[...]

It was only with the arrival of Ikea that Canadians realized that all this Swedish sex actually occurred in short, narrow beds, covered by garish, odd-sized sheets. This seemed to confirm the seriousness of Scandinavian Eros, as these beds were obviously not designed for sleeping. So now the Swedes were telling us how to live as well as how to love.

Richard Tallent is against FCC giveaways.#

Our congresscritters just voted 55-40 today to roll back the FCC media ownership rules put in place this summer. This took guts—those 55 senators have now probably pissed off Clear Channel, Time Warner, and the other conglomerates who would just love to filter everything you hear with their own bias and advertising.

The ball is now in the House's court, and is on the calendar (thought I can't find a number to reference). Unfortunately, representatives are much more inclined to cater to the desires of local media companies: if not, they may be left in the cold come the next election cycle.

Renee Hopkins on Disruptive Capitalism.#

an important issue regarding disruptive innovation: The fear that someone else's new technology will replace rather than enhance your current technology. This is the fear that newspaper publishers feel today as they struggle to replace classified ad revenue lost forever to the Internet, and see blogs and other non-traditional online information sources eroding not just their readership but their very definition of what gets to be called "news." It's the same fear evidenced by the music industry as it sues its own customers for file swapping.

So imagine the fear being caused by what HBS' Shoshanna Zuboff calls here "disruptive capitalism," the idea that "business is broken and can't be fixed with today's tools." It's not just a particular business model that's broken, she claims, but the basic business models of the current incarnation of capitalism itself (she refers to this as "managerial capitalism." Says she, "It is time for managerial capitalism to give way to a broader and more powerful new capitalism that leverages the individual uniqueness, social networks, and distributed technologies of our times."

Godless at Gene Expression quotes part of a report about envy in monkeys.#

Monkeys strike for equal pay. They down tools if they see another monkey get a bigger reward for doing the same job, US researchers have found.

The experiments show that notions of justice extend beyond humans, says Sarah Brosnan of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. This is probably an innate ability that evolved in our primate ancestor, she believes: "You need a sense of fairness to live in large, complex groups."

Brosnan and her colleague Frans de Waal taught brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to swap plastic tokens for food. Normally, monkeys were happy to exchange a token for some cucumber.

But the monkeys took offence if they saw a neighbour getting a grape for a token. In about half of such trials, the short-changed capuchin either refused to hand over its token, or rejected the reward. Some threw the token or cucumber clean out of their cage.

Peter Lindberg shares his mission statement for his weblog.#

Software projects are seldom successful—at least if the definition of a successful project is that it is completed on time, within budget, and that it delivers the features that its stakeholders want. Finding out what they want is in itself a huge challenge—and if you add to that a deadline, and a budget, you have what seems to be an insurmountable task.

[...]

Why do we, when we face challenges, seem to gravitate toward the disciplinary and rationalistic approaches, focusing on one thing at a time, one after another? Isn't software development essentially a creative activity, based on experimentation and exploration—that is, isn't it nonlinear in its nature and thus incompatible with a disciplinary approach? Then, can we really expect to gain full control over software projects, committing to a particular scope, timeframe, and cost? This is what I intend to explore in this weblog.

The Yeti links to Dean Esmay writing about racism.#

This quote is about a black mayor of Chicago.

I remember, with some amusement, how even some of the most racist people I knew said things like, "Yeah, he's a nigger but he's not bad."

Now you can sit there and get all shocked and appalled and wish people who talk like that would just die. You probably want me to go off on a rant about how horrible they were, too. And I did growl at them about it then. But Washington, and people like him, knew better: racist attitudes and racist language may die hard in some folks, but you can bridge gaps and work toward a better future more effectively by working with what you've got rather than what you wish you had. Putting a big chip on your shoulder and striking holier-than-thou poses feels very good, but it usually doesn't mean shit in politics. If anything, it only aggravates the problem, at least in a case like this. But if you do things right, if you find ways to reach out and get along, the younger generations, they'll be better than their parents.

Peter Lindberg thinks this Samuel Johnson quote says something about blogs. I concur.#

[Samuel] Johnson was well known for writing his essays right up to the deadline, often keeping the publisher's runner waiting for the manuscript as Johnson completed it. In fact, you can notice the effect in many of his essays: An essay starts to make an argument in one direction (corresponding to the first sheets Johnson handed the runner) and then the argument shifts radically or even to the opposite pole as Johnson continued writing and thinking—but revision of the earlier parts was impossible, as it was being typeset for final copy as Johnson pondered.

Ryan McGee writes another letter...#

So here goes, this confession of mine. You ready? Funny, here I am, years later, and I still wonder if I have your attention or not. I didn't know anymore then than now, and then I had the advantage of usually being in the same room as you. Still, I never knew. I thought I did. Well, hoped, to be more accurate. Always felt I was fifteen minutes away from losing your interest. I was a Warholian boyfriend. If you'd indeed ever refer to me in any conversation as a former boyfriend. Or even refer to me at all.

OK, dancing around the issue. Always dancing. Filling the aural (or, in this case, epistolary) void with white noise posing as conversation. I'm trying to remember it now…that pose. You always established that certain pose when you'd settle into your "Oh Christ, he's going to try to understand why things aren't perfect between us" state of mild contempt for my existence. You put up with it, because by and large you're not a cruel person. I don't think so, anyways. Would like very much to think that. You couldn't flat out tell me to go to hell, and that by and large is a very commendable quality, I am man enough to admit that. Give me that or its foil of an option and I'll take you any day of the week.

Don Park defines good and bad patents the way I would if I were to have such thoughts.#

GIF patent was legit but Unisys was standing there and charging toll on what most of us considered public road. What is public road and what is not? The distinction is simple. If your enforcement of the patent hurts your public relations more than it adds to your bottomline, then you are standing on a public road.

To be more precise, if your patent gives your solution advantages in quality of service, then it's legit. But if your patent leads to the only solution, then you are a troll. If your patented formula makes cars go faster, I am fine with that. If you patented the idea of automobiles, I am not all right with that and all for public's right to steamroll over such patents.

James Robertson responds...

This is reasonable, but extremely difficult to get right as a matter of law. In fact, Don's thinking sounds an awful lot like the famous Supreme Court (US) justice thought on pornography - I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. The problem with this is, lots of people share that thought, but most of them will disagree on whether the particular thing they are looking at qualifies. Back to the drawing board....

Tony Pierce, so funny!#

my first girlfriend ever and i talked last night on the phone. she wants me. oh yeah. she pretends she doesnt. she says she wants to be a nun. she says a lot of things, but she lies. she wants me.

she doesnt mind that im not cool, cuz to her im cooler than ive ever been since she knew me at fifteen. she actually missed my peak, but dont tell her that.

Tony Pierce cuts through the shit around republicans.#

im just going to run, and run republican and when people say, what about when you wrote this thing or that thing in your blog, how can you say youre a republican now, i will say that i have had a change of heart. i have seen the light.

and i have seen the light.

its like being the favorite child in your parents eyes.

you can steal elections, and bungle, and have a chequered past, and have drunk daughters, and shady oil dealings, and even with a republican congress and supreme court, if you fuck up, its all good.

so sign me up for that shit, cuz where i work at, when you fuck up you get called out and nobody will defend you.

Kim Burchett on Christopher Lydon.#

I remember when he was the host for the Connection here in Boston, and although I thought he spent a bit too much time on how the internet was changing the world, he was still twenty times better than the two hosts that immediately followed him (I don't even remember their names). He was so good that I considered volunteering to transcribe his interviews so that they could be published on the web.

The current host for the connection is Dick Gordon, and he's very good. But now that I know Christopher Lydon has his own weblog, it's like getting bonus episodes! The fact that he still gets interviews with important people even though he's not on the radio anymore is very impressive, and a real testament to Mr Lydon.

Unfortunately even though his interviews are now on the web, they're still audio-only. I prefer text because I can read much more quickly than I can listen.

Sometimes it's nice to sit back and listen to the real voice behind the blog while you'll doing the dishes or making a clay pot.

John Gruber writes about Apple.#

One of the biggest differences between Apple and the vast majority of tech companies is that everyone tends to have an opinion about them. Normally (and correctly), people only form strong opinions about products with which they're familiar. Not so with Apple, a company which has long had vociferous detractors who have little or no experience using Apple computers.

Part of this is just foolishness, a by-product of the ignorant notion that everyone is entitled to an opinion on anything. (Bob Dole's 1996 denunciation of the motion pictures Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers as "nightmares of depravity", despite admitting that he had never seen either film, springs to mind.)

But part of this has been Apple's own doing. Apple's brand has always been as much about culture as about technology. There was a very strong us-against-them slant to much of Apple's marketing in the hey-day of the first Jobs era; e.g. the "Computer for the rest of us" slogan for the original Macintosh. If there's an "us", there must be a "them". And while this corporate posture was wildly appealing to us, it was off-putting, if not downright insulting, to those who perceived themselves to be thems.

Blue Cats is a great book. I find synesthetes and synesthesia to be intriguing topics. It's very hard to imagine what these people see and feel, but reading about it makes it seem very astounding. I'm jealous!#

Quick overview: Synesthesia is when someone has one sense stimulated (seeing or hearing something) and multiple senses respond (feeling or tasting something.)#

This quote is interesting, it clears up some misconceptions and helps you understand what it's like.#

We synesthetes learn early on that to most people, our perceptions are merely quirky, even suspect. Other people don't see what we see and they're not convinced that we see it ourselves. But what each of us sees is the reality we know, and we are not at liberty to change it. I am no more able to change the white color of the letter O then I am to change its circular shape; for me, the one is as much an attribute of the letter as the other. For a synesthete, the colors of letters, numbers, or musical notes are not arbitrary. They are just there, part and parcel of the thing they help to make visible in the world. [pg. 4]

This quote points out that it has to do with the "wiring" of the brain as it develops. (Later we'll learn that adult synesthesia is also genetically linked.)#

Researcher Daphne Maurer tells s that all babies under the age of four months have synesthetic responses because the brain has not yet differentiated is functions into discrete compartments that respond separately to a stimulus that is visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile. [pg. 11]

The next quote was very revealing to me. At first I was under the impression that the eye saw a certain shape and its colour was transformed before it was processed, but this suggests otherwise.#

I might compare the experience to watching a black-and-white movie, which, in fact shows everything in shades of gray; yet the viewer "corrects" the actual pale grey tone of a young actress's hair to blonde, her slightly darker "gray" eyes to blue. Something like this happens for me when I read black (or any color) printed words. My mind "corrects" the print color of the letters to my ow colors for them. Synesthete Alice Dunder comes close to describing this sensation of still seeing one's own letter color while reading. As she wrote on the synesthesia list: "For me, the color stays, somehow hovering on the fringe of my vision inside my head. I see the printed letter with my 'outside' vision. It's separate from the 'inside' one."

It's much easier for synesthetes to "correct" printed letters to the colors of their "inside vision" if the printed text is in only one color. If, however, the printed text letters are in multiple colors that don't match those perceived by the synesthete, he or she can find it very irritating to see the letters in the "wrong" colors. [pg. 25]

A tidbit on how this is possibly a good thing...#

Synesthetic perception may offer an evolutionary advantage of producing enhanced memory as multiple modes are activated to store information.

Making the subtle, background "matching" of your mind more explicit.

In the nineteenth century, lots of artists were excited about synesthesia and wished they had it. Madame Blavatsky, for example, had fascination with coloured "astral music"...#

Blavatsky's own fascination with synesthesia raises an important question. Is the notion of such ethereal color-sound correspondence the same as the perceptual experiences reported by those with constitutional synesthesia? [ed--this is the scientific term for the primary type] Are constitutional synesthetes visually perceiving sound vibrations beyond the normal reach of human perception? The answer is almost certainly no. A distinction must be made between those who entertain a theoretical notion of color-sound correspondence and those who literally experience it on a neurological level as part of their everyday reality.

Throughout the book there is discussion that synesthesia is like a "real" metaphor. A song really is soft. Hot pink really is loud.#

Heinz Werner, who in 1934 wrote that any sensory stimulation "first arouses a common, synesthetc sense before differentiating into specific, modal perceptions." So, according to this view, at the heart of our experience is a single sense that, once touched by the outer world, becomes like a "magic wand" differentiated/multifaceting our single sense experience into things seen, things heard, things smelled, things tasted, and things touched. [...]

And perhaps it is this "common sense" that makes it commonplace to speak metaphorically of someone wearing "load colors" like hot pink or "cool colors" like mint green. [pg. 45]

This quote shows that being a colour is a fundamental aspect of a number, whether you see a 7 or think about a 7, it is always yellow...#

A recent experiment at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, indicates that for colored-number synesthetes, there is no thinking about numbers without perceiving their colors. In the experiment, Professors Michael Dixon and Philip Merikle, assisted by their graduate student Daniel Smilek, found that just presenting an equation such as "5 + 2 =" was enough to evoke an experience of yellow for their subject, C., a colored-number synesthete whose synesthetic response for 7 is yellow. She did not first have to see the number 7 written out or hear it spoken in order to have her colored-number response. Rather, simply being presented with something that would induce the thought of the number, such as an arithmetical equation, was sufficient to induce the synesthetic response. [pg. 71]

There are some funny disadvantages of synesthesia...#

In my own case, I have sometimes found that processing information by color can be a double-edged sword. I remember once being in the Czech city of Prague and getting lost on the subway, where the A line is green and the B line is orange. On my alphabet trail, A is orange and B is green. So I kept following A to take the orange line, but kept getting myself on the green line. When people told me I had to take the orange line to get where I wanted to go, I kept insisting I was already on the orange line! It was not until someone said, "No you are on the green A line" that I realized my mistake. And I wonder how many other times in my life I mah have gotten lost without realizing why. [pg. 75]

One researcher thinks that synesthesia was once the norm but has been evolved away in most cases.#

Cytowic indicates that, somewhere along the evolutionary trail, most human beings lost their capacity for synesthetic perception except for the one in two thousand who retain it. For this reason, Cytowic refers to synesthetes as "cognitive fossils." [pg. 104]

Great quote...#

For lack of attention, a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
-Evelyn Underhill

The colors that synesthetes describe their numbers, letters, or music in are incredibly precise...#

Using specially prepared tapes along with color chips and geometric shapes, Dr. Cytowic had [David] Hockney match colors and shapes to the recorded musical notes, which the artist did with great precision, taking great pains to match the exact shades of the hues he perceived in response to the given musical notes. Cytowic finds that this insistence on preciseness of shade when matching a given sound with a color is a hallmark of those with synesthesia. As Cytowic writes, "This infinite variety of a single colr, this exactness of shade, is a typical synesthetic comment." [pgs. 115-116]

Some research suggests that synesthesia has to do more with how people code their information, and less to do with how they perceive the world. For example, a synesthete was blinded but still "saw" colours when reading braille.#

All of us code information in one or more sensory modes. We may recall that as far back as 1920, psychologist Raymond Wheeler, working with his blind subject and fellow researcher Thomas Cutsforth, concluded that there was no such thing as image-less, sensation-less meaning and that all people code information in particular sensory modes. As historian Kevin Dann reports in Bright Colors Falsely Seen, "Wheeler and Cutsforth showed that synestheisa is not a phenomenon of perception alone, but of conception; synesthesia is an essential mechanism in the construction of meaning that functions in the same way as certain unattended mental processed in nonsynesthetes. [pg. 140]

http://www.synesthesia.com/ for more information.#