weezil at Machine Gun Keyboard keeps us up to date on the dastardly Diebold voting machines: in the last week not only have they been proven to be embarrasingly easy to untraceably tamper with electronically, but the much touted lock to prevent such tampering can be opened with an easily obtainable mini-bar key. Read, as they say, the whole thing
Sociology
Seeing red, not slim
Slimming photos with HP digital cameras.
The two models in the ad for this “Digital Slimming Effect” are both women. Both of them are already slim before the effect is applied.
What. The. Fuck
A visiting FRA
Father’s Rights Activist, that is. He’s commenting over at the old place, in a post from a few months ago where I referenced another blogger’s longer commentary:
Kevin T. Keith at Sufficient Scruples examines how fathers’ rights organisations attract pseudoscientists making up mental illnesses that their harpy ex-wives must be suffering from that both explain why they’re being difficult about visiting rights and why the courts should just
Courtesy and the Cultural Cringe
Germaine Greer has done her shit-stirring act again with her piece about the death of Steve Irwin, and the usual furore has broken loose, wherein Greer is presented as standing in for all us feminist harridans who hate manly men.
UPDATE: Tracee Hutchison’s piece in today’s Age is an excellent analysis of the essential misogyny driving a lot of the reaction to Greer’s piece – would the outrage have been such a howling uproar if Clive James had written it instead?
Sexualised sports uniforms turning girls off sport
That is a key finding of a bipartisan Senate inquiry into female participation in sport and recreation.
TIGHT lycra bike pants and full body-suits could be a cause of teenage girls dropping out of sports.
A Federal Government report has recommended clubs give teenage girls the option of wearing looser-fitting comfortable clothes, to avoid them becoming body-conscious and abandoning organised sport.
Why oh why do people want to pry?
That is the moan of TomKat in Vanity Fair about the prurient curiosity regarding their baby. As the NYT points out, when you announce your romance on TV by jumping on Oprah’s couch, announce your engagement at a press conference, and pose tits-and-teeth-out endlessly on red carpets before the pregnancy became inelegant, the public becomes conditioned to a photo-opportunity parade through your lives and
The principle is not the practise
wbb, in comments over at LP, summarised most neatly what is also pretty much my stance on evaluating faith traditions:
Of course there’s stuff to like in Buddhism as there obviously is, too, in Christianity or other Pre-enlightenment philosophies. But the lived experience, rather than contents of the official user’s manual, and the uses these instutionalised belief systems are put to, in controlling
Suddenly, no-one’s named after Saddam anymore
From the International Herald Tribune:
The country’s Sunni-Shiite bloodletting is driving many Iraqis to bury the very essence of their identity: their names.
To have to hide one’s name is considered deeply shameful. But with sectarian violence surging, Iraqis fear that the name on an identification card, passport or other document could become an instant death sentence if seen by the wrong people.
How to not irritate feminists
A great post over at Unfogged, which lists “guidelines for avoiding actively irritating women who are discussing feminist concerns” including every feminist’s unfavourite:
6) Don’t say, “Men have problems too! Women are always doing mean things to men! [stamps foot] And we don’t complain about it as much!”
Feminists love to talk about the ways men are ill-served by the current arrangement. But if you’re one of the guys who
Don’t get too paranoid, but …
This is well worth reading for people who haven’t yet inculcated habits that mean they can’t easily be identified online: Death by Google Calendar: how I identified you to rob you.
I am not picking on this woman but I needed to show a real example. There are tons of public calendars far more revealing than this one. In literally 20 minutes, I now know the name, address, phone number and schedule of this woman. If I can do it, you can be damn sure the real bad guys can. Please be smarter about what you share online. If given a choice, choose the private setting. If you are not given a choice, either choose a new calendar or talk in some code that only you understand. I guess I just don’t understand why people set themselves up to become victims.
Hoyden About Town 