Tag Archives: linky-links

Link of the Day: Legacy

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This link goes to a very short (only a few paragraphs long) story written by kennric as part of a project he’s doing to write 52 original short stories in 52 weeks, one story per week for a year.

This story is number 17 in the project, and it’s called Legacy. It’s a meditation on transhumanism and uploading and what it means to be a copy, and it’s quite beautiful. aclaro, figmentj, datan0de, femetal…I think you guys in particular will enjoy it. Thanks to zaiah for the link.

Warning: Reading this story made me cry.

List o’ Linky-Links, Christian Fundamentalist Edition

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My browser has 32 open windows, so you all know what that means: time for another list of Linky-Links, where we see who fed it and who ate it all across the Whacky Wide Web!

This episode seems to have a special theme: those whacky Christian fundamentalists, up to their silly hijinks in their classic laugh-a-minute way that we all know and love.

So without further ado, on to the links!

First up, we have this breaking news from Muckflash: Christian Group to Produce Clean Pornography.

The group, recently incorporated as the Southern Coalition for Progressive and Pure Change (an obscure sub-branch of the International Congress of Church and Ministries), will pay for the production of 5 films which they say will act as a “stepping stone away from iniquity” as viewers use the films as an intermediate step as they “switch paths from the sexually impure world of the devil to the white shining path of the Lord.”

“We’re envisioning a kind of ‘nicotine patch’ for the tortured souls that struggle in this world to find a Christian voice in the midst of a popular culture that has lost the Word of God in a heathen cacophony of selfish desire,” said Reverend Dr. Stanley Lovett, Founder and Executive Director of SCPPC.

Let’s not forget the subtext of racism and good old-fashioned slave-era stereotypes about blacks, which tend to follow conservative Christianity like flies following a charnel wagon:

Dr. Lovett was willing to give a general description of the the first film, however. According to Lovett, Jodie and the Great Black Whale will feature an 18 year old missionary in Jamaica who is swayed by native temptors into working as an exotic dancer.

And just in time, too, because over at the God and Science site, we learn that pornography leads to sex with robots, and sex with robots leads to the extinction of the human race.

The data underlying the “radical” predictions laid out in this page come from scientific studies that have examined the pervasiveness and effects of pornography upon men and women. In particular, recent data show widespread acceptance of pornography among today’s young adults as “an acceptable way to express one’s sexuality.”1 For males the acceptance rate is 67% compared to 37% for their fathers. Among young adult women the acceptance rate is 49% compared to 20% among their mothers. So, the rate of acceptance of pornography has doubled in just one generation. When those young adults raise their own children, the acceptance rate will probably be greater than 80% for both males and females. The step between watching pornography through technology and engaging in sex acts through an attractive technological object is not that far, especially when the object acts as if it were a real human being.

I don’t know what’s more silly about this article–the notion that human beings don’t actually sex out to have babies and certainly won’t go out of their way to have one if there’s a convenient, non-baby-making alternative, or the even more insulting notion that human relationships are a dismal, unhappy affair, filled with complication and weighed down by erratic, moody women, and that anyone who could skip the whole sordid mess by having sex with robots would never want human companionship.

The Religious Right truly is the village idiot of American culture. These guys never cease to blow my mind with their bizarre misunderstanding of basic human emotion. They really, truly do not get it, on a level that borders on autistic.

Oh, and anti-intellectualism. Mustn’t forget anti-intellectualism. Over on the NY Times Stanley Fish blog comes this astonishing condemnation of intellectual enquiry, Does Curiosity Kill More than the Cat?

Most conservative Christians seem content to keep anti-intellectualism as the subtext of their basic world view. Not so for Stanley, who puts it right out there:

In short, curiosity — sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom — is their God. The question, posed by thinkers from Aquinas to Augustine to Newman to Griffiths, is whether this is the God — the God, ultimately, of self — we want to worship.

And finally, PZ Myers posted this little gem, which neatly sums it all up:

The wonder of the physical universe: Naica, Mexico

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Naica, Mexico is home to a number of lead and silver mines. It is also home to a geological formation that appears to be unique in all the world: the Crystal Cave of Giants, discovered accidentally by mine workers in 2000.

The Crystal Cave is a gigantic underground formation containing the largest natural crystal formations ever recorded. The cave is superheated by a pocket of subsurface magma, and until recently was entirely flooded with water that was supersaturated with gypsum and other minerals. The combination of high temperature, superheated and supersaturated water, and time (lots of it–about 500,000 years, to be exact) produced one of the most mind-bogglingly beautiful things on earth:

The cave has been pumped dry by mine workers, who accidentally broke into it while mining for lead. It’s still superheated by magma; the temperature within the cave is a steady 122 degrees F with a humidity of over 90%. Explorers in the cave use special chilled suits and breathing masks, and even with this equipment can only remain within it for 15-45 minutes at a time.

The cave is doomed; when the mines are played out over the next few years, the mining companies will stop pumping the water out, and the influx of new, non-supersaturated water will destroy the crystal formations. There’s more about the cave, and more pictures, here.

I love the physical world. There is not a single day of my life that goes by when I am not boggled and awestruck by how magnificent this universe is. Should I live to be ten thousand years old, I will never, ever stop being awestruck by how awesome all of this is. Take a handful of basic particles, make them obey certain fairly simple rules, and the things you end up with are beautiful and magnificent beyond comprehension.

We, as self-aware entities, are the part of the universe that understands itself, and that one simple fact gives us incalculable value. I will never understand the tendency of some people to turn away from the wonders of the physical world into a tiny, feeble make-believe universe that’s a paltry six thousand years old and soon to be rendered obsolete by some invisible man with magic powers who lives up in the sky and spends a great deal of time worrying about what kind of clothes we wear and how we have sex.

The universe is incomprehensibly large and incomprehensibly fine-grained, ancient and mysterious and filled with so much beauty that it’s hard to imagine any person seeing it without being filled with reverence and awe. The more we learn about the physical universe, the more beautiful and magnificent it is. The desire to turn away from understanding the world around us and retreat into an imaginary bestiary of little gods and demons is the desire to turn away from the greatest beauty we can ever hope to bear witness to.

Yet Another Side Project

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I know there are quite a few Macintosh folks on my flist. The rest of you can move along; nothing to see here.

A lot of folks in the Mac community are familiar with MacFixIt.com, a long-time Mac troubleshooting and forum site that’s been with us for about thirteen years. I have been a MacFixIt forum user for nearly that entire length of time, and managed to rack up just over 12,000 posts during my stay there.

Alas, all good things1 must come to an end; recently, Cnet News bought MacFixIt and closed it down.

Which is a damn shame, because the forums there represented what was arguably, minus a few hiccups, one of the best Macintosh communities on the Web.

So I opened my mouth, which is often foolish, and said hey, wouldn’t it be cool if some enterprising person set up a forum to replace it and we could all move over there? And other folks said hey, great idea, Tacit, when will you have the new place ready for us?

So I am pleased to announce the formation of a brand-new Mac community, Fine Tuned Mac.

Anyone out there who’s interested in a Mac community, I invite you to join us! We don’t bite2, and if you need any troubleshooting help, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more knowledgeable bunch3.

1 Except me, and many of my friends and partners, I hope.

2 Much.

3 Well, us and TechSurvivors, another Mac troubleshooting forum I like and recommend.

Linky-Links: iPanties, Discordianism, and God is a hit man

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This will appeal to a number of folks on my flist: Discordian Quotes, a fun little project brought to you by a friend of mine. Sample quotes:

– A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.
– Epistemological relativism may be true for you, but it isn’t true for everyone.
– Good for you, you’ve learned to extinguish your personality for my comfort

There’s even a Twitter feed!

Next up, for those of you with iPhones, there are now iPanties to go along with them!

Yep, that’s right, panties with the iPhone’s iconic “Slide to Unlock” graphic. There are some iPhone users on my flist who I wouldn’t mind seeing in these. Hell, there are some non-iPhone users on my flist who I wouldn’t mind seeing in these. Wouldn’t object too much to sliding where required to unlock them, either.

And finally, to some Baptists, God is a gun for hire. These people, who are currently busy praying for God to strike Obama dead, subscribe to a principle called “imprecatory prayer”–the notion that the book of Psalms validates calling upon God to kill one’s enemies.

Linky-Links for the Day, Now With Bonus Video!

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Once again, Safari has so many windows open that my computer is bogged down and my swap file is growing like the Federal deficit, so here we go!

Psychology/sociology

Half of your friends lost every seven years

Had a good chat with someone recently? Has a good friend just helped you to do up your home? Then you will be lucky if that person still does that in seven years time. Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst investigated how the context in which we meet people influences our social network. One of his conclusions: you lose about half of your close network members every seven years.

Why do women have erotic rape fantasies?

A bit shallow, I think, and doesn’t really go into as much detail as I’d like to see about things like perception of desirability and blame avoidance, but kudos for mentioning that acting out such fantasies can be challenging for the person playing the role of “perpetrator” as well as for the person pretending to be the “victim.”

Geek

Viral video hoax, or proof of impending cyber apocalypse?

As part of an ad campaign for a video game convention, a publicity firm created a phony video showing a group of hackers breaking into the computer-controlled lighting system of an office building and then playing Space Invaders on the building. (zensidhe, you’ll love the video int he article.) That’s not the interesting part–the interesting part is that McAfee thought the video was real and started sounding alarms about evil hackers attacking building infrastructure.

Art

Other Uses for Books

Books carved into three-dimensional sculpture. some of the bits of artwork are amazing.

Wonderful Body Painting (NSFW)

Highly stylized body painting involving blending a person into a patterned background. I’d love to be this talented.

Sex

Teen who auctioned virginity learns that taxes are the wages of sin

If you’re gonna make money, you’re gonna pay taxes. Especially if you’re in the country on a work visa, which puts you in a different tax class from the get-go…

LELO INEZ Luxury Vibrator

And by “luxury” they mean “expensive.” And by “expensive,” try $10,500. For a vibrator. A gold-plated vibrator, to be sure, but a vibrator nonetheless. At this price, I wonder how much each orgasm costs.

Ya-Ya Japanese Love Dolls (NSFW)

These things fall smack dab in the center of the Uncanny Valley for me. I can’t imagine having sex with one of these dolls outside of perhaps a forced humiliation scene or something. I can’t quite decide what’s creepier–the “mini” (childlike) ones, or the fact that the Web site carries a disclaimer reading “For those who wish to see photos other than what is on our homepage please contact us by email. These are limited only to customers who plan to make an order. Please refrain from making requests if you are not serious about ordering or in the same business.”

And speaking of scary sex toys, Woody Cock Ring and Nut Cruncher (NSFW)

What do you get when you combine a cock ring with a pair of alligator jaws? A sex toy designed for maximum discomfort of the man during sex. Just looking at this thing makes my eyes water!

10 Ridiculous Anti-Pornography Commercials

My own personal favorite, the anti-porn film made by Charles Keating (before he embezzled $1.2 billion from Lincoln Savings & Loan, triggering the collapse of the entire S&L industry) made the cut. The thing that’s most amazing about these videos is that they are sincere. The people who made them, truly believe them.

Physics fail

Hallmark Corporation Jumbo Snowman Snow Globe Recall

What is it? A giant, round glass ball, about ten inches wide, with a snowman’s head and arms on it. What’s wrong with it? If you set it on your windowsill, when the sunlight comes through the window the snow globe focuses the light into a tiny hot point and burns down your house.

Politics

Virgina bans smiles in DMV driver license photos

Because–get this–they’re now using facial recognition software on your mug when you get your driver’s license. And the facial recognition software can’t cope with smiling faces. So they now instruct everyone to adopt a “neutral expression” when being photographed, and reject any photo in which the subject is smiling.

Top 10 Rush Limbaugh Racist Quotes

Is there anyone who can explain to me why people still listen to this drug-addled, racist scumbag? Number one on the list: “I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Science

Reawakening Retrocyclins: Ancestral Human Defensins Active Against HIV-1

This is interesting. Some primates contain natural defenses to retroviruses that essentially make them immune to HIV infection. As it turns out, we have the gene that confers this immunity–but it’s dormant because at some point in our evolutionary past it became garbled. Now a group of researchers have figured out how to reactivate it.

Humor

Picture is Unrelated

Bizarre, funny, and “WTF?” images fro all over the Web. Some of these images make me scratch my head and wonder at the human condition.

Boston Police Department: We Will Let You Know When The Zombies Come

In case you were wondering.

And finally, a bonus video! This was sent to me by the-xtina, who has yet to be suitably punished for it, and it’s totally got me earwormed. Remember the melodramatic, utterly over-the-top music video for the 80s song “Total Eclipse of the Heart”? Well, this is what happens if you remove the lyrics and replace them with a literal transcription of what’s happening in the video itself. Safe for work, but your explosive peals of laughter might not be.

“What the effing crap? That angel guy just felt me up!” indeed.

It’s a whacky, whacky world…

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So today the charming stranger who gave me candy at Frolicon has put me in her Web comic. Woot! Now my roommate the-no-lj-d and I have both been immportalized in Web comics for things that happened at conventions.

And, the kittycat Liam has made it on to LOLkink! (Note: That link is safe for work; the rest of LOLkink most definitely is not.

Link o’ the Day: Trans-simianism

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With a tip of the (virtual) hat to figmentj:

Enough is Enough: A Thinking Ape’s Critique of Trans-Simianism

Klomp predicts that through a technology called ‘hygiene’ we could extend the simian lifespan well into the late 20s or possibly 30s. What exactly will the post-simian do with all that time? Do we really want to live in a society populated by geriatric 27- year- olds? In living so long and spending so much time ‘thinking,’ do we not also run the risk of becoming a cold, passionless race incapable of experiencing our two emotions (fear and not fear)? How much of our simianity are we willing to sacrifice for this notion of progress?

Rest assured that while Klomp may have accrued a recent following, there is no reality to his fantastic claims. What is concerning is the increasing number of young apes spending less time clubbing animals and more time ‘inventing,’ ‘thinking’ and ‘creating,’ none of which contribute to the preservation of the simian way of life. These sorts of fads come and go, however, and this author is confident that in a short while everyone will have forgotten about Klomp and the notion of being anything more than an ape.”

A List of Linky-Links

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Ok, folks, time for another of Franklin’s web browser dumps! Ready? Let’s go!

Old Russian nuclear technology

Two links from the EnglishRussia Web site today, both of them concerning cold-war-era Soviet nuclear technology. Those Russians never met a nuclear reactor they didn’t love.

Abandoned Russian nuclear lighthouses

What do you do if you have a whole lot of Arctic waterfront you need to put lighthouses along, but there’s no power or habitation anywhere nearby? Embed nuclear reactors in the lighthouses, seal ’em up, and forget about ’em!

Russian self-propelled nuclear reactors

Small reactors designed to be driven out to remote villages, available in two different styles–crawler models and tractor-trailer rigs.

Science and Technology

The importance of stupidity in scientific research

The thing about doing real research is that you’re trying to answer questions nobody has answered yet. You can’t look up the answers in a book, because nobody knows them. That’s the point. If that makes you feel stupid, that’s OK.

Yeast-powered fuel cell feeds on human blood

They’re still crude and not very powerful, but fuel cells that can create energy from your blood may one day power everything from pacemakers to insulin pumps to synthetic organs.

Debate about vaccine hilights sexual double-standards

When the HPV vaccine was first approved for use in girls, opponents raised a stink that vaccinating against STDs could cause girls to become sexually promiscuous. Now that the vaccine is being studied in boys, critics talk about its effectiveness and its safety–but don’t seem to argue that it will result in boys becoming promiscuous.

My Bionic Quest for Bolero

One person’s experience with trying to reprogram his cochlear implant to make it high enough resolution for him to appreciate music. (Note: Wired can’t get its act together with HTML doctype and encoding tags, so Mac users will have to click View->Text Encoding->Western (ISO Latin 1) to make the weird garbled characters in the story display properly.)

Sex

New Scientist: Spanking and BDSM bring couples closer together

The title says it all, really.

Art

From drjon, who has a habit of posting links that cause me to waste tremendous amounts of time:
Naked Urban Exploration.

Not safe for work, but quite lovely. If you like the (female) human body and you like urban decay, this site’s for you. I’m especially fond of this photo.

Colorful high-speed photos of air rifle pellets hitting stuff

I have an entire essay brewing about the physical world we live in and how it’s only a tiny, crude approximation of all that exists on the back burner right now, inspired by these pictures.

My Little Pony gets a Hollywood makeover

My Little Pony, re-imagined as Slave Leia, Edward Scissorhands, the alien from “Alien,” and more.

Houdini Chair Ensure Your Guests Will Stay for Dessert

One part functional utilitarian object, one part bondage, one part art.

Humor

50 reasons why nobody wants to publish your book

“The world isn’t quite ready for an illustrated children’s book called SOME MOMMIES ARE INTERNET PORNSTARS” and 49 more.

World of Warcraft: The Lich King in IRC chat

Spider pride!