Ethnomathematics

Mathematical Patterns in African American Hairstyles

19%

19% of American still believe that clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction has been found in Iraq.

Iraq

Goebbels was right. "Je dreister eine Lüge, desto eher glauben sie die Leute".

babyhide

The debate (if there ever was such a thing) over the sculpture (a pistol) made from an artists' own skin seems to be over by now. When I started reading the responses, I was reminded of this passage from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", by Philip K. Dick:

"My briefcase," Rick said as he rummaged for the Voigt-Kampff forms. "Nice, isn't it? Department issue."

"Well, well," Rachael said remotely.

"Babyhide," Rick said. He stroked the black leather surface of the briefcase. "One hundred percent genuine human babyhide." He saw the two dial indicators gyrate frantically. But only after a pause. The reaction had come, but too late. He knew the reaction period down to a fraction of a second, the correct reaction period; there should have been none. "Thanks, Miss Rosen," he said, and gathered together the equipment again; he had concluded his retesting. "That's all."

http://www.sudsandsoda.com/notebook/archives/000668.html

http://www.cioran63.com

mental health issue

3AM Non-Fiction - THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE RIGHTWING MIND

Centuries from now, assuming we survive this eerily psychotic era, Republicanism, Conservatism and the rightwing mind in general could well be regarded not as a political movement, but as a mental health issue.

Beyond Manzanar

This is so typical. "Beyond Manzanar uses navigable 3D game technology, projected life-sized, to immerse the user in a historical and cultural space and engage them as a participant in history." OK, so just about very 17 year old had all the hardware required to run the piece, but no, "For technical and copyright reasons the full Beyond Manzanar piece is not available online." Exhibition dates: April 26 – May 2, 2004 Hours: 12:00 – 5:00pm. There's no address.

Hmmmm... if you have something to say, don't you want to be heard? The subject matter is interesting enough.

Manzanar

There are some demos available as VRML here: http://mission.base.com/manzanar/demos.html

relatives

On of these people is a relative of mine (my family is not very large), but which one?

50-jarig bestaan van de Korenbeurs. C. Duvekot , D. Nuyteren , P. Luitse , H. Nelema , Waldijk

Beeldbank

Another CSS book

Here's a nice read if you're new to CSS and you have no clue what the fuzz is all about. The author seems genuinly nice and well, errrm.. he's right. See for youself.

css1.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Swipe

I've alway felt we should be able to SELL (we are the creators after all, so shouln't we also be holding the copyright) our own data. Some kind of PDA like device should be able to negociate the price with the data collectors. For example, say my local supermarket wants to keep track of my shopping behavior, and hook up my credit card info with data on my purchases and my contact data so that they can send me targeted e-mail. Shouldn't I be able to negotiate a price in the form of some kind of discount. My data broker should be able to establish my data's current market value, and I would keep all that data myself. Imagine being able to go to the competition to see what THEY would offer. They can collect a lot of data, but knowing what I just did over at the competition is beyond their abilities.

Here's a beginning. The Data Calculator.

"This calculator allows you to determine what your data bits are worth on the open market so you can request proper compensation when it is asked from you. For instance, a typical cellular phone company will ask for your address, date of birth, phone number, Social Security number and driver's license to open a new account. Consult our data calculator and that will be $13.75 please! "
The SWIPE Toolkit

images

I should go out more. This could be interesting, but with the exception of Tom Verlaine, I'm not familiar with the work of any of the of the artists, and despite the name, there aren't a whole lot of images to see on the festival site.

Images Festival 2004 - Calendar of Screening & Events

There's hope

I don't like using public transport very much. I prefer to ride my bike. An unfortunate side effect my rides is that I am exposed to some of the most horrible behavior from, one need not be surprised, motorists. The combustion engine has a devastating effect on people's brains. The constant honking is puzzling: I'm usually faster than they are. I can't possibly be in their way. They're in -my- way. Since these motorized retards make up the majority of people I'm exposed to, I don't tend to think very highly of my fellow citizens.

But sometimes the bus- or subway rides are nothing short of a revelation: I'm wrong! The city is full of smart, intelligent folks.

You usually can't tell from their looks, but look at what they're reading. OK, most of them still read junk, but sometimes I see a shimmer of hope: I found a school kid reading Kafka, on the Bloor subway. I was waiting for the bus with one of those unremarkable guys from my quiet (read boring) neighbourhood, where the lights go out at 9 PM, who pulled a copy of a Chomsky book from his plastic bag. And an Asian man who looked like one of those Indian programmer types was reading Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment.

I'm reading my books on a Palm handheld. How inconsiderate of me not to share whith others what I'm reading. (The crying of lot 49, BTW). But I can see it happening in the not-too-distant future. Sharing books has become -very- possible today. Cory Doctorow is releasing his books under a Creative Commons licence, and Lessigs book Free Culture is available as a pdf file. I can see myself having this conversation any time soon:

- Hey, what are your reading there?
- Cory Doctorows latest. Would you you like a copy?
- Sure, beam it over. Anything I can get you? Something from the Gutenberg project perhaps?

But we'll have to figure out a way to let others know what we're reading, and I'll be back on my bike next week. I somehow doubt that the motorists will be interested. All they say is honk. Honk. Honk. Honk. And I go triiing! triiing! dingelingeling!

webstats

I'm trying to come up with a way to make our own webstats. The logs that our provider gives us aren't very readable. The webstats I've seen so far cost money or are, shall we say, a little suspect? Built myself a little sandbox to play around in. I only need this entry to create a referrer.

There are so many!

Marcel van Eeden uses
http://www.hotstat.nl/

Braincast heeft er wel drie:
http://www.nedstatbasic.net
http://xl.topstat.com/
http://cqcounter.com/

and then there's

http://www.sitemeter.com
http://das.reinvigorate.net
http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/
http://www.web-stat.com/

Did I miss anyhing?

The Smile Project

Neil and Iona are two emotive interactive beings. They are the prototypes of a family of five that will interrelate with each other and the audience, expressing themselves with their bodies and faces.

The Smile Project

It made me think of the Electric Monk in Douglas Adams' book, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency":

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.