Bloggernation

Ben likes making up portmanteuas to describe blogging. See his latest work here in this handy post about not letting the lack of blog love get you down. So here’s mine. Bloggernation – it’s where a blogger appears to go into hibernation.

I don’t think I’ve ever written one of those “I’m sorry I haven’t posted here for a while” posts. And I don’t really plan too start now. But if I were to not blog so much in the next three weeks (or if I were to blog exclusively about boring stuff like what I’m studying) please understand it’s not because I hate you, but because I love my fellow students and like the idea of passing (and possibly the idea of helping others pass to).

I’m also still playing around with the design. Bear with me on that too, and no doubt I’ll be procrastinating here in the coming days and weeks. And I’ll try to comment on your blogs occasionally – rather than just arguing with atheists for the sake of arguing, or perhaps more correctly, for the intellectual stimulation (even though I said I wouldn’t do that any more).

I do love a good procrastinargument. Anybody got a topic they want to thresh out?

Expect a lot of blists (blog lists) and blictures (posts almost entirely made up of a picture) to tide me over.

October 20, 2010

Caffeinfographic

Harvard’s med school put together a bit of an infographic about the health benefits of caffeine. You should totally start drinking it (though there are downsides).

October 20, 2010

Nice Shots: A life through the lens of a shooting gallery

Ria van Dijk has visited the same shooting gallery almost every year of her life. A shooting gallery that spits out a polaroid of people who successfully hit the target.

Here she is at 16.

She’s 88 and still a dead eye.

From this gallery here.

October 19, 2010

How to run two columns with different categories using a second WordPress Loop

Regular readers can ignore this post. This is for google. And in case I want to go back to running two separate columns of content on any other sites. I’ve decided to fold my curiosities category back into the regular run of the mill posts.

Pulling a category out of the main loop is pretty easy. It just takes a query posts loop with a nice and easy “exclude” command, excluding categories by their numerical ID (which you find by going to your categories page and clicking on the category and looking at the number in the URL).

Here’s the code for the loop for the main column.

<?php if (is_home()){$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
query_posts("cat=-655,-4811&paged=$paged");}?>
<?php if (is_page()) {$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
query_posts("cat=-655,-4811&paged=$paged");}?>

The loop for the sidebar looks a little something like this. It should produce results that give you a different output based on the page you’re looking at (so you won’t get the same ten sidebar posts on every page).

<?php if (is_home()){$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; $myPosts = new WP_Query();
$myPosts->query('showposts=10&cat=11'.'&paged='.$paged);} ?>
<?php if (is_page()){$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; $myPosts = new WP_Query();
$myPosts->query('showposts=10&cat=11'.'&paged='.$paged);} ?>
<?php while ($myPosts->have_posts()) : $myPosts->the_post(); ?>

<div>
<h2><a href=”<?php the_permalink();?>” title=”<?php the_title();?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<div>
<em>Posted by</em> <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?> </div>

<?php the_content();?>

October 19, 2010

The Myth of “Just Friends”

Dear female readers,

It is rare that I step into the murky world of dating and singleness. I just don’t like the flak that comes the way of married people who dare to raise their heads on the issue. But we were all single once… and I’m a guy, and I have single male friends and single female friends, and I realise this is a murky issue and a real struggle for many people – but the problem is compounded by a bunch of myths and misconceptions that are rarely discussed. This post isn’t for you if you’re the kind of girl just waiting for a guy to man up – and it isn’t a post urging guys to man up. I wrote one of them before somewhere (or two). If you’re a guy bemoaning your singleness and you haven’t asked a girl out – man up. Grow some balls. Take a risk. If you’re a guy who is sick of having your heart mercilessly crushed then you should read this letter to a frustrated single man (from elsewhere). And take heart, most married guys have been there too (I know I have). Lets face it. Girls are complicated.

Ladies,

If a man in your life, an acquaintance or friend, asks you to spend some time in his company you can be almost certain that he is interested in you and that he’s actually asking you out on a date (even if it’s not specified) – that he doesn’t want to be “just friends” – it takes enormous courage to ask a girl to do stuff, because when they say no, after you’ve mustered up whatever nerve you have, it feels like you have been belted in the stomach with a baseball bat. It’s crushing and often leads to periods of deep reflection on the question of “what is wrong with me?”

Guys can’t be just friends with girls they are interested in. The same baseball bat like experience hits over and over again every time you observe other guys getting a yes where you got a no. It’s incredibly unlikely that a guy is asking to spend time with you exclusively because he wants to be your mate. If he asks you to dinner, to a movie, to go for a run, to have coffee, to do anything where it’s just the two of you – and you aren’t related – then he’s interested. In his mind one-on-one time is basically a date, and asking you to spend such time is essentially a case of asking you out. And if you’re not, you should say no straight out. Don’t let him down gently. Don’t string him along looking for an opportunity to ease him into it. Rejection hurts, but the longer you drag it out, the more it hurts. And the crueler it becomes.

The worst situation is to be “the brother I never had” – because then you get all the emotional baggage of a relationship with none of the payoff. Hollywood writers know this. They play on that tension with the poor geeky guy all the time. It’s the tension the TV show Bones is built on. And if it frustrates you watching Bones destroy Booth’s heart over and over again then take that lesson and apply it to your life. It seems girls in Christian circles don’t watch enough of these movies and TV shows. Because they seem to sail into these murky waters in negligent or reckless oblivion. I’m sick of sitting by watching guys hearts get messed with by girls who don’t understand this one, foundational idea, guys, 95% of the time, aren’t really interested in being your “mate” – they’ve got all the mates they need, and they don’t want to pile that list up with people who have rejected them.

Relationships are hard work. Love doesn’t happen overnight. You’re not committing to marrying the first guy you go out with. Give a guy a break. If you enjoy hanging out with him in groups, or in one on one settings, don’t hang out for Mr Right – hang out with the guy Mr Right in Front of You. A bird in the hand and all that proverbial jazz.

Most Christian guys have problems – part of becoming a Christian means you recognise you have failings. The ones who don’t appear to have problems are probably arrogant or harbouring some sort of deep seeded emotional issues anyway, scratch the surface of most guys and they’re probably incredibly insecure when it comes to relationships or entirely too scared of commitment to be worth pursuing (that’s why they’ve dated all of your friends and none of the relationships have lasted). If a guy seems to have it together, can hold down a job, and is passable at conversation then he’s probably a winner. It helps if you find him moderately attractive.

Stop hurting my friends. It’s harder being a guy than you realise and you’re just compounding the singleness problem by making the risk of asking a girl out too great and the dating process too serious. If you’re thinking about marriage on or before the first date you’re probably doing it wrong. You’re making it worse for all of your single friends who are dying to have a guy ask them out because you’re making relationships seem out of the reach of mere mortals. You’re also blurring the lines between friendship and guy/girl relationships so that nobody really knows what’s going on. And I’m sick of trying to pick up the pieces on both sides.

That is all.

October 18, 2010

Light relief: a film clip made using long exposure photography

This is an incredibly incredible use of long exposure light art photography. None of the light paintings are done in post production.

October 15, 2010

The pixels will inherit the earth

They are coming. Watch out. I make a resolution to stay in high resolution.

October 15, 2010

Generation Next: Coupland on the future

Douglas Coupland coined the named Generation X and wrote some books that I like. He’s put forward forty five theses on the future. That are interesting and thought provoking. Here are some of my favourites.

8) Try to live near a subway entrance

In a world of crazy-expensive oil, it’s the only real estate that will hold its value, if not increase.

9) The suburbs are doomed, especially thoseE.T. , California-style suburbs

This is a no-brainer, but the former homes will make amazing hangouts for gangs, weirdoes and people performing illegal activities. The pretend gates at the entranceways to gated communities will become real, and the charred stubs of previous white-collar homes will serve only to make the still-standing structures creepier and more exotic.

17) You may well burn out on the effort of being an individual

You’ve become a notch in the Internet’s belt. Don’t try to delude yourself that you’re a romantic lone individual. To the new order, you’re just a node. There is no escape.

21) We will still be annoyed by people who pun, but we will be able to show them mercy because punning will be revealed to be some sort of connectopathic glitch: The punner, like someone with Tourette’s, has no medical ability not to pun.

33) People who shun new technologies will be viewed as passive-aggressive control freaks trying to rope people into their world, much like vegetarian teenage girls in the early 1980s

1980: “We can’t go to that restaurant. Karen’s vegetarian and it doesn’t have anything for her.”

2010: “What restaurant are we going to? I don’t know. Karen was supposed to tell me, but she doesn’t have a cell, so I can’t ask her. I’m sick of her crazy control-freak behaviour. Let’s go someplace else and not tell her where.”

35) Stupid people will be in charge, only to be replaced by ever-stupider people. You will live in a world without kings, only princes in whom our faith is shattered

October 15, 2010

A dash of nostalgia: Comic Book Ads

Once (or twice) upon a time I seriously coveted the awesome stuff advertised in the comic book classified ads. Who doesn’t want x-ray glasses? This Flickr collection is fun.

October 14, 2010

U-G-L-Y: You might have an alibi afterall

20th century prophets Daphne and Celeste had it wrong when they sang:

“U.G.L.Y
You ain’t got no alibi
You ugly!”

The science of economics proves it.

A new(ish) study published in The Review of Economics shows that ugly people are actually more likely to be criminals. (PDF of the actual study here). Probably because there are only two paths – model citizen and criminal. And they’re not pretty enough…

It’s not a new idea…

The BBC describes the findings as being significant in “the new field of anthropometrics”, suggesting that this could be a handy profiling tool. In fact, anthropometry, in particular detecting criminal tendencies by the measurement of facial characteristics, is a very old discipline. It was previously condemned as pseudoscience – could it be making a comeback?

But they have the numbersTM:

“It is based on an anonymous questionnaire combined with equally anonymous ratings of the subject’s attractiveness. It shows a small but significant correlation between attractiveness, or the lack of it, and criminality. The most unattractive segment are 1.5 per cent more likely to have committed robbery, 2.2 per cent more likely to have committed assault, and 3 per cent more likely to have sold drugs. Or to have been caught doing so, at any rate.

The authors note previous work showing how more attractive people are more successful in their careers and earn more. This puts less attractive people at a disadvantage in the world of work and nudges them towards criminal alternatives.”

Ugliness is also not entirely subjective. Apparently (according to a video essay I made at uni that I have since deleted from memory and existence) it is all about symmetry. Or lack thereof.

If you are feeling unsymmetrical today then you need to kick start your criminal career – there are a few posts about how to rob a bank in these here parts that might help.

Sorry. It’s science.

October 14, 2010

Patents are a virtue

This is a fascinating feature on the guy who invented the intermittent windscreen wiper and sparked decades of patent lawsuits against major motoring companies. It delves into the murky depths of patent infringement and what does and doesn’t constitute intellectual property in the United States (and globally).

Copyright and Intellectual Property stuff gets really murky. And I think is a product of selfishness. On both the part of the infringer and the producer.

“In the last decade or so, the boundaries of what is patentable have expanded. In 1972, a molecular engineer named Ananda Chakrabarty applied for a patent on a microbe he had engineered that would help break down crude oil. The Patent Office rejected his application, citing a clause in the patent code which says that life forms are not patentable. Chakrabarty appealed, and in 1980 the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, 5-4, creating a brand-new sector of intellectual property: life. Last February, the National Institutes of Health applied for thousands of patents on human genes. The prospect that the United States government may soon own the gene that causes, say, green eyes has naturally created a certain amount of controversy, with some people predicting a kind of land grab at the cellular level–the Japanese patenting brown eyes, Swedes patenting blond hair, Italians patenting Roman noses.”

The story of Ford’s (and plenty of other motor companies’) infringements of Robert Kearns’ windscreen wiper patent is a sad one. He lost his marriage and possibly his sanity in the singleminded pursuit of justice. And what Ford did was wrong.

“Roger Shipman, a Ford supervisor, announced to Kearns that he had “won the wiper competition.” He told Kearns that his wiper would be used on the 1969 Mercury line. Kearns was given the prototype of a windshield-wiper motor to commemorate the occasion. The other engineers welcomed him aboard Ford’s wiper team. Then, according to Kearns, Shipman asked him to show his wiper control to the rest of the team. Wipers were a safety item, Shipman explained, and the law required disclosure of all the engineering before Ford could give Kearns a contract. This sounded reasonable to Kearns, so he explained to the Ford engineers exactly how his intermittent wiper worked.

About five months later, Kearns was dismissed. He was told that Ford did not want his wiper system after all–that the other engineers had designed their own. Kearns remembers that one of the engineers taunted him as he was leaving. “

But that was possibly the result of a systemic flaw in Ford’s thinking – from the founder himself.

“Henry Ford loathed patents. One of Ford’s lawyers once boasted, “There is no power on earth, outside of the Supreme Court, which can make Henry Ford sign a license agreement or pay a royalty.” Ford thought that the patent system should be abolished, because, he said, it “produces parasites, men who are willing to lay back on their oars and do nothing,” and because patents afford “opportunities for little minds, directed by others more cunning, to usurp the gains of genuine inventors–for pettifoggers to gain a strategic advantage over honest men, and, under a smug protest of righteousness, work up a hold-up game in the most approved fashion.””

Inventors are cool though.

“The lawsuit against Ford became Kearns’ life. He put every penny he had into it. He was driven by an uncynical, almost spiritual belief in justice and an equally pure hatred of the automobile industry. At a hearing in 1980, Kearns said, “I want you to understand that I am wearing a little badge here, and that badge says that I am an inventor, and it says I am a net contributor to society. And it is like maybe you can’t see the badge, and these other gentlemen can’t see the badge, and I don’t think anybody is going to be able to see the badge until my trial is finished in this courtroom and I will find out whether I am wearing the badge or not.”

October 13, 2010

The West Wing v The Wire

Nothing gets media studies students salivating like The West Wing. Except The Wire. They’re a bit polarising – it’s like the Canon v Nikon, or Mac v PC debate. Two products of similar qualities targetting similar demographics with slightly differently nuanced tastes.

It’s about user experience. Do you want to watch TV to feel smart? Then watch the West Wing, do you want to watch TV to feel superior to the dirty criminals running the streets and the beat-cops paid to curb the uncurbable? Then watch the Wire. Do you want wit or grit? Macroeconomics or microeconomics? Barksdale or Bartlett? McNulty or Ziegler?

A couple of people dialoguing a review of the new Facebook movie The Social Network described the difference nicely, I’ve edited out the swearing for those for whom that sort of thing is an issue:

“SFJ: Let’s compare “The West Wing” and “The Wire.”

NVC: I’d love to!

SFJ: Sorkin talk makes everybody feel smart and makes the s***y world look OK because making money and being an a*****e is fine as long as a deserving nerd wins. This appeals to nerds and anybody who fancies themselves as SMARTS. Further, he goes in hard on lexis—the act of delivering words—and lets the characters walk you through everything that would either be the job of a) acting or b) the audience using their heads. It is a way to load middlebrow content into totally fun speed talk that saves many people some hard work while feeling highbrow, because only smart people can talk that quickly. It’s like associating athletic skill with height, de jure.

SFJ: Think of how many Sorkin characters are sort of Flat Erics who talk, rapidly describing every idea that could have been acted out. The advantage is you can cram a lot of action into one episode. The downside is a weird, Aspergersy sameness to every project. Actors become court stenographers in reverse, spitting out Sorkinese and then stepping aside to let the next block of text barrel through.

NVC: Agreed.

SFJ: “The Wire,” on the other hand, doesn’t mind alienating you. It eliminates spoken exposition (lexis) in favor of mimesis. This is an entire world, it is full, and you had better take notes if you want to keep up. You have to WORK. People who don’t look like you may be in charge for a minute, maybe for a long time, and nobody has the moral high ground.

NVC: THERE IS NO PRESIDENT BARTLET IN BALTIMORE.

SFJ: Sorkin loves the abasement that is a by-product of believing in the high ground. It’s in everything Sorkin does.”

October 13, 2010

Cool stuff from Google

Google put together this presentation of cool stuff from around the web. I’ll no doubt blog some of it – but if you want an advanced screening and haven’t seen this yet check it out.

October 13, 2010

EyeQ?

I saw this ad the other day. I think. I can’t be sure, because I’m colourblind. Which apparently makes me dumb.

October 13, 2010

A cacophony in B Flat

Inbflat collects musical pieces in B Flat from YouTube and allows you to create your own aural arrangements.

October 13, 2010