Identity, Space Madness! and some great frellin' words
What signals are you sending (or are perceived) from your virtual identity?
One "basic" example that is taken much the same way each time it occurs is with the waste of resources. Wasteful costs, said Donath, is associated with reliability. In the human world, I took this to mean that people who seem to be able to spend rather lavishly on material things - spending that may be viewed as wasteful by others - may also be sending the signal that they can be depended on. Perhaps financially. But, sometimes, the signals that someone may be trying to send could get perceived the wrong way. For example, someone who wears real animal furs may be trying to signal wealth and taste. But a receiver of that signal may instead see someone who is cruel to animals. A point Donath made about such signals is that there's a cost associated with them, almost as if there's private, signaling economy taking place between beings that's totally subconscious. Some signals may have risks associated with them that could amount to costs that make the signal not worth sending.
There's some great stuff in there about how the signals we send can be misunderstood by those receiving them. Berlind ties that basic cultural idea to the virtual world. How does your virtual identity come across to those who may stumble across it? Look at your blog, your Flickr photos, your website with a detached nature. Who do you look like to someone who doesn't know you from Adam (or Eve, as the case may be)? Are you happy with that view?
Enigmatic object baffles supernova team
Astronomers can only speculate on what the object is. "It could be some galactic variable [star], a supernova or a quasar. But none of those makes any sense," Dawson says.
The object's behaviour doesn't match any known quasar. The team is not convinced the object is outside our galaxy, but nothing like it is known inside the galaxy. Furthermore, the region of Bootes is a largely empty area of the sky far from the plane of the Milky Way.
This sounds the basis for some sort of wild sci-fi story, but it's real science going on right now. Things like this excite me greatly. Those little bits of observation that don't fit at all with anything observed before. Those deep mysteries that the universe still holds for us to discover, decode and learn from. There's just so much out there... we haven't even scratched the surface...
And the next time you're out and about in public, surrounded by small children who you don't want to corrupt with you foul mouth (or for whatever other reasons you may not want to openly swear, like not wanting to offend the NSA while they're listening in on your phone calls) just pick from this list of fictional "swear" words for a frakking great time. :)
One "basic" example that is taken much the same way each time it occurs is with the waste of resources. Wasteful costs, said Donath, is associated with reliability. In the human world, I took this to mean that people who seem to be able to spend rather lavishly on material things - spending that may be viewed as wasteful by others - may also be sending the signal that they can be depended on. Perhaps financially. But, sometimes, the signals that someone may be trying to send could get perceived the wrong way. For example, someone who wears real animal furs may be trying to signal wealth and taste. But a receiver of that signal may instead see someone who is cruel to animals. A point Donath made about such signals is that there's a cost associated with them, almost as if there's private, signaling economy taking place between beings that's totally subconscious. Some signals may have risks associated with them that could amount to costs that make the signal not worth sending.
There's some great stuff in there about how the signals we send can be misunderstood by those receiving them. Berlind ties that basic cultural idea to the virtual world. How does your virtual identity come across to those who may stumble across it? Look at your blog, your Flickr photos, your website with a detached nature. Who do you look like to someone who doesn't know you from Adam (or Eve, as the case may be)? Are you happy with that view?
Enigmatic object baffles supernova team
Astronomers can only speculate on what the object is. "It could be some galactic variable [star], a supernova or a quasar. But none of those makes any sense," Dawson says.
The object's behaviour doesn't match any known quasar. The team is not convinced the object is outside our galaxy, but nothing like it is known inside the galaxy. Furthermore, the region of Bootes is a largely empty area of the sky far from the plane of the Milky Way.
This sounds the basis for some sort of wild sci-fi story, but it's real science going on right now. Things like this excite me greatly. Those little bits of observation that don't fit at all with anything observed before. Those deep mysteries that the universe still holds for us to discover, decode and learn from. There's just so much out there... we haven't even scratched the surface...
And the next time you're out and about in public, surrounded by small children who you don't want to corrupt with you foul mouth (or for whatever other reasons you may not want to openly swear, like not wanting to offend the NSA while they're listening in on your phone calls) just pick from this list of fictional "swear" words for a frakking great time. :)