| Journal & Weblog | Write to Save Your Life | August 24, 2003 |
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Archived Entries posted Thursday, June 19, 2003 »
Update: Sadly, the charred remains of a woman found near Canny?s car were confirmed as those of Canny Ong. I know she will be missed by many.
Scintilating Tiling More Escher-inspired fun with squares. I am so totally, like, mtv dot com right now it?s not even funny. (Right-click and "Set as Background", tile). Only recommended for those not susceptible to nausea or headaches caused by visual overstimulation.
» Captivating internet material of late:
Language and Thought Over the weekend, the NY Times reported* on the theories of William Hannas, linguist, who postulates that East Asian writing systems hamper scientific thought because they do not have the abstract nature of Western alphabets. Coming across as rather inciting and ethnocentric, his ideas have been met with some obvious controversy. However, considering some of my own experiences with cultural differences, as well as a few years studying Chinese, I'm more inclined to see the legitimacy of Hannas's theory than take immediate offense. The process of learning Chinese from an English standpoint was worlds apart from learning German, which I took for 6 years. It was a process of memorization and learning the compiler-like bridge of pin-yin, rather than the formation of a language that was constructed on a small, finite set of letters (fortunately already learned). That being said, I disagree that written language influences one's ability to perceive the physical world. Air is air, water is water, and if you release a ball from a height of ten feet, anyone can predict what course it will take. A Chinese scientist may not be able to verbalize a false hypothesis for lack of subjunctive tenses, but I have no doubt that the concept can be verbally conveyed and understood. Additionally, Hannas's hypothesis could be taken one step further and (falsely) applied to Western culture, by saying that because English does not have the same grammatical devices of, say, Japanese -- devices that indicate a speaker's social standing with respect to the person addressed and certain modal inflections of verbs -- we are unable to create written works of art that are as subtle and syntactically elegant or robust -- as, say, The Tale of the Genji -- and therefore English speakers are not as artistically inclined. From the innumerable works of art -- written and otherwise -- in both cultures, we know this is not the case (or if it is, the case is completely subjective to matters of personal taste and not scientific rigor). Going back to the case of false hypotheticals (false(?) hypothetical: "If Chinese used an abstract alphabet, they would be better at science."), it's interesting to note that the absence of such linguistic devices mirrors East Asian cultural protocol preserving a respect for what has been and what is, respect for the elderly, respect for one's ancestors and respect for the past. From an East Asian perspective, it could be said that Hannas has the ability to hypothesize on these linguistic incongruities out of a lack of respect inherent in our language. * (NY Times User: chrisono, Pass: chrisono)
Faster, Stronger Rebuilding computers this week and found a few righteous resources for tools and information on optimizing Win XP:
Phrontistery Forthright's Phrontistery: Your one-stop resource for obscure or lost words; essays and opinions on numerical notation, mathematics and archaeology; and other useful resources.
al-Ternative  Arab news network, al-Jazeera published an English version of it's website Monday, offering an alternative view on the events in Iraq -- often in striking disagreement with what's been reported here in the US -- and disturbingly provacative photos of dead US soldiers. It's no wonder then that the site was hacked on Tuesday, which would explain why I haven't been able to access it since (at first I'd wondered if it had been blocked by the US government).
I question the extreme nature of many of the articles, seemingly aimed at antagonizing American readers with editorials on the influence of the Israeli lobby in Washington and "the joke" that is the US's coalition of "obscure" countries, all compounded by the fact that many of these opinionated stories remain without reporter by-lines. After watching any of the US news channels, however, it is an interesting change of pace. It makes you question the integrity of our own news sources. As with anything, I'm sure the truth lies somewhere inbetween.
D150wzed  This site was hacked sometime last night by a particularly friendly individual who was kind enough to leave everything intact, while placing a startling, yet rather docile notice in its place. (To the culprit: Thank you for (1) a job well done and (2) your keen sense of civility about the matter, the mark of a true gentleman (or -woman (you never know these days)))
The Department of Justice's Computer Crime site is linked at the bottom and, while everything looked to be very official, and thus very surprising, the title of the page -- "0wned by the federales..." -- revealed it for a hoax. Political statement? Public alert? A few weeks ago, Ashcroft declared sites selling drug paraphernalia and infringing on copyrights would be siezed by the government, raising novel legal questions. Even though federal law prohibits selling any product that is primarily intended for use with illegal drugs -- including water pipes and small spoons used with cocaine (my mom used to collect small silver spoons) -- I'm extremely wary about this, particularly in regards to privacy and freedom of speech. I don't necessarily disagree with the move, but I sense intense slippery-slope potential.
Cockney Jack Never'd a bird of tasty thyme Tang bear, four. Half a ewe? Pear's a trick pickled gumption.
Note to Self DDR Freak Videos (Several broken links, but Mr. Wendell's interpretation of Don't Stop is particularly amusing)
Recommended Reading From William Goldberg's "Thought as a Hobby": . . . I no longer dismiss lightly a mental process which for nine-tenths of the population is the nearest they will ever get to thought. They have immense solidarity. We had better respect them, for we are outnumbered and surrounded. A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill. This from a man who's work I trivialized in high school, a man who visited his headmaster as much as I did and learned German from Albert Einstein, who "had devised a coherent system for living": It was a moral system, which was wholly logical. Of course, as I readily admitted, conversion of the world to my way of thinking might be difficult, since my system did away with a number of trifles, such as big business, centralized government, armies, marriage. A system to which I'd readily subscribe. (And although I've often lamented the fact that the appeal of original thought and creativity is dulled by the knowledge that someone will have always been there before you, it's a comfort to know that when wielding an opinion in opposition to "nine-tenths of the population," some has been there before you.)
» One of the last pictures taken with the ill-fated camera is now on display at the Mirror Project. R.I.P., dear Nikon Coolpix 2500.
» Interesting, albeit a bit dated: the lyrics in Amber's club hit "Yes" are excerpted from Joyce's Ulysses (scroll to the bottom).
Snap Snap Snap Tourists. You don't want to be caught dead looking like one (now for more practical reasons, in addition to haute couture) and yet it's virtually impossible not to if you want to have any sort of physical keepsake of your travels since people simply don't take pictures of where they live. As a resident of a beautiful city and state surrounded by natural beauty and picturesque landmarks, visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists a year, I know this.
Conspiracy and Media I've never been much of a conspiracy theorist or enthusiast of legal matters but after reading about Coca-Cola’s alleged fraud and copyright cover-up this weekend, I can’t help but wonder if our judicial system truly is the blind matriarch we’ve come to recognize and cherish. This ten-page, strenuously-technical report tried my patience (here is a short synopsis for those without the time or energy). The author offered an interesting tid-bit at the end, however, addressing the societal trends in regards to media in a statement that was congratulatory, ironically applicable, and much more interesting: Broadcast news media seeks to condense issues to their most diminutive form. It has, over the past fifty years of its evolution, gradually reduced the life span of a 'story' to the space allocated between the real estate owned by their corporate sponsors. In fact, the whole concept of a 'news bite' is just that, a short, simplistic hors d'oeuvre of information that can travel through the airwaves and telephone wires just long enough to keep your attention on the next advertisement. And in this new paradigm of story-telling and news-breaking, there isn't enough time for any valid exploration of the true nature of power and its matrix of inter-dependent agencies. We cannot deny the fact that, as the most pervasive medium for information-gathering on the planet, television's limitations have severely impacted and damaged the collective capabilities of its viewership.
Surfing Some interesting links found on the web today:
Universal Client or Parasite? My friend Michelle forwarded me this article by David Coursey, in which he defends AOL's repeated attempts to deny Trillian users access to its network. His arguments aren't very solid. Coursey's main defense is that AOL can do what it wants with its network and if AOL wants to keep out non-AOL users, then that right is sacrosanct. What I want to know is how AOL members feel about this. I doubt America Online has queried its subscribers to find out whether they are okay with being isolated from non-AOL contacts who eschew the internet giant for another. An AOL spokesman called the problem a "security breach," but does anyone really believe that? The simple fact is that Trillian users erode AOL's advertising audience, which causes AOL to lose money. Does the media giant truly need these proceeds to operate? Will they crash and burn if AIM/AOL users choose Trillian to access their network? It's doubtful. Their main revenue seems to stem from regular membership fees (that's not mentioning the Time/Warner revenues). I would say to AOL: Stand up for a higher ideal for once. Do what you claim to do and connect those 20 million+ members to the rest of the world. You will profit more from that in the long run than any meager advertising campaign ever will.
Urban Tribes The constant in my life -- by default, not by plan -- became a loose group of friends. After a few years, that group's membership and routines began to solidify. We met weekly for dinner at a neighborhood restaurant. We traveled together, moved one another's furniture, painted one another's apartments, cheered one another on at sporting events and open-mike nights. One day I discovered that the transition period I thought I was living wasn't a transition period at all. Something real and important had grown there. I belonged to an urban tribe. When I first read this article, I was shocked at how accurately it describes my life and the lives of so many of my friends. Although I'm gay and thus legally condemned to a lifetime classification as a "never-married" ? thanks, in part, to the brains of the U.S. Census Bureau ? it's relieving to hear Ethan Watters make a formidable argument to the extent that urban groupings are a "fresh expression of [family values]," rather than a degredation of them.
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Dan Taylor is the creator of Project: Shutterbug, an online gallery of tourists snapping photos, submitted by both Taylor and viewers of his site (here's my submission). While picture quality and content is widely varied, there are a few gems (like here and here) that really capture the somewhat risible, bizarre nature of photography. Although I've 
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