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katlalog

070131 23:34 Comics / TV / Culture

The good thing about the muslim scare is that we're learning a lot about everyday muslim culture.

070122 21:15 Computing

Want!: The ErgoPod500 - computing in bed. (via boingboing)

070119 12:16 Environment / Politics / Science

Doomsday Clock moved two minutes closer to midnight.

Not since the darkest days of the Cold War has the Bulletin, which covers global security issues, felt the need to place the minute hand so close to midnight. [...]

Growing global nuclear instability has led humanity to the brink of a "Second Nuclear Age," the group concluded, and the threat posed by climate change is second only to that posed by nuclear weapons. [...]

"Humankind's collective impacts on the biosphere, climate and oceans are unprecedented," said Sir Martin. [...]

In the years ahead, rising sea levels, heat waves, desertification, along with new disease outbreaks and wars over arable land and water, would mean climate change could bring widespread destruction, the board said.

070117 00:38 Technology

Look what came by one of my websites today. Wow.

User Agent = Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.01; Windows 3.1)

070116 14:19 Science Fiction

George Clooney will produce Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age as a six-hour miniseries. Stephenson will be involved, adapting the novel for tv.

070113 16:16 Science

A Penn State University study found that pheromonal clues from fathers may be delaying the onset of sexual maturity in daughters, as part of an evolutionary strategy to prevent inbreeding.

"Our results indicate that girls without fathers matured approximately three months before girls whose fathers were present," Matchock said, adding that the data seem to suggest a relationship between length of the father's absence and age of menarche -- the earlier the absence, the earlier the menarche.

Results from the study additionally suggest that the presence of half and step-brothers was also linked to earlier menarche. Girls living in an urban environment also had earlier menarche compared to girls in a rural environment, even when fathers were present for both groups, and had similar levels of education.

Matchock speculates that urban environments provide greater opportunities to get away from parents' inhibitory pheromones, and encounter attracting pheromones from unrelated members of the opposite sex.

This discovery.com article goes beyond stating research results but delves into the background of puberty research and touches on the potential political debates that might arise from it. Unfortunately this is bound to provide fuel for the neo-conservative side of the debates regarding teenage pregnancy and family values.

...the unstable early environment of many an inner-city teenage girl produces earlier puberty and the whole range of attendant opportunistic behavior that ends in an increased risk of pregnancy. [...]

Belsky [...] does not believe that his theory is about how biology can cause earlier pregnancy, but about how a biological drive can make a young person from an unstable home more likely to respond to various societal pressures. This is what he calls a "nature-based theory of nurture." If true, it predicts that the effects on teen pregnancy rates of growing up in an unstable home would be stronger among poor kids than among middle-class kids.

070113 01:25 Culture

Today's radio pick: BBC's Hobo Heaven. Unhappy relationships drive men onto freight trains. No, that's not what the BBC is trying to say. It's just uncanny how many of the interviewed men give breakups as the reason for leaving the settled life behind.

070109 16:13 Internet / Civil liberties

Sealand is up for sale. (Wikipedia's HavenCo article.)

[Update 070113] The Pirate Bay is trying to buy it!

070103 18:50 Media

I've occasionally talked about my changing media consumption habits here. I'm a prime candidate for TV/DVD-on-demand and since i got broadband again this extends to my radio listing habits. I'm eternally grateful to all radio stations that make their broadcasts available in online archives so that i never have to miss my favorite shows ever again, and especially so to the BBC (although they have some programmes only available for a week after broadcast). Also there is the fact that i can be anywhere in the world and not have to live without my Beeb.

There are real treasures out there. Today i discovered another interesting programme on BBC Radio 4: Don't Hang Up.

Would you pick up a ringing payphone? That's what Alan Dein is hoping as he dials across the globe. Talking to strangers anywhere, anytime, listening as the phonebox becomes either a story box or a confession booth.

In the December 29 broadcast he talks to a 14 year old social outcast in Margate, a transsexual in New Zealand and a security officer at a rest area in the Everglades in Florida. Because he does this mainly at night, you get the really interesting characters. Riveting stuff. And a reminder that each and every one of us has enough material to fill a book.

070103 12:54 Games

I have finally taken a few days off and started playing Sims 2 last night for the first time. I used to be a huge Sims fan when the first version came out but haven't allowed myself to be sucked into the time vortex of such an addictive game again for a long long time.

I'm not sure if i'm just playing it differently but i discovered an interesting shift in emphasis in the gameplay. They have put a huge effort into the relationship and social side of the gameplay and that is a really nice development. The original Sims was for me a capitalist plot to make people appreciate the work hard - earn money - be able to afford all the nice goodies you can buy cycle. Ok, that's still there (although at least we now get the occasional day off without losing our jobs), but the social interaction between sims has reached new levels of intricacy.

This fact and the new wave of social games like it - such as Second Life - are a really good sign. I have hope that the age of extreme individualism and egotism is over and that we are ready and longing for communities again. I think that we are experimenting and re-learning in a safe environment (if it goes wrong you go back to the last save and try again) how to make communities work without them becoming too norm- and value-setting. How much of the self that we developed in the last few decades can we retain without losing the benefits of a close community. How much tolerance can a community muster to allow individual self-expression, a multitude of lifestyles, values and ways of doing things.

A similar such experiment is Burning Man, of course, which i see as proof that we could very well function in a non-monetary and non-hierarchical society. And we would have so much more fun.

070101 22:52 Comics

Enough of them Web 2.0 jokes already.

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