tab dump part the first.
Idk why but I've been tab-hoarding for weeks. As a result, running roughly 220 tabs was causing firefox to crash constantly. So, here is several days worth of tab writeups, which might mean whatever I wrote sounds a few days old. That would be because it is, but it's probably not too important.
So what do we think of the new layout? I was really, really tired of the old one and I figured I'd let this one sit for awhile for Halloween. I might mix it up a little but we shall see.
This is... odd. While it's commendable that the printers are looking out for illegal activities, like the one guy who was able to stop a potential school killing when he saw pictures of a ridiculous weapons collection, the fact that the police aren't able to separate actual child porn from parents' photos is really sad. The fact that there are multiple similar cases mentioned in the comments (including one that was BREASTFEEDING photos) is ridiculous. I mean, I love the United States and we've got a pretty great thing going on here, far from perfect, but still--we really need to get a grip on our excessive cases. Suing people left and right, wringing malpractice for more than it's worth, I mean, we're just slowly eating away at a great foundation. I hope we really can figure this shit out before we collapse the system. =/
Idk if I posted this before because my computer crashed, but here it is anyway. French MPs want health warnings on airbrushed photographs. Since they're considered the base of all that is high fashion, this is a very good thing IMO. I never realized until someone pointed it out and I sat down and studied it a bit the extent to which advertisements are photoshopped. I didn't even realize such extreme photoshoppery was possible! But they lengthen legs, erase bad skin, and the part that really creeps me out, lengthen necks. It's no longer a case of people comparing themselves to tall and thin models--it's a case of people comparing themselves to almost alien beings (by which I mean the extent to which they've been changed).
I'm worried about Samoa and Hawaii what with the tsunami and everything. =/ I hope things aren't going too badly, and I take the fact that I haven't heard much in the news to be a relatively good thing...
Sometimes, concept art is super cool, or really clever. this is a concept lamp to demonstrate how much energy we waste, and how desperate you would have to be to actually need it.
Uh, did I mention this senator is a chauvinistic douche? I don't think he gets it. Plus, Stabenow's comment is pure winsauce. Definition of epic fo sho.
A saber-toothed squirrel! Holy crap!
NASA may have discovered the creation of a planet in the middle of development! Wicked.
The Trapper Kindle. Hilarious. And totally something I would want. (If I had a Kindle, that is.)
Okay, so Walmart and Target have these pretty cool "costume t-shirts" that are a screen printed tee with (or sometimes without) a typical acessory, like a pirate-looking shirt with a bandana, a zombie and vampire shirt with a printed bandana to cover the mouth, an angel shirt with wings, et cetera. I rather admire them for the cleverness, and today I saw a shirt that looks like the ghostbuster's coveralls in the men's section of Target. I almost bought it just to wear for everyday, but I don't think they had one small enough. Plus they said Venkman, and I'm not so much a Venkman fan. (DON'T KILL ME I LIKE BILL MURRAY, HIS ROLES JUST GET ANNOYING SOMETIMES. Like Groundhog day. Anyway.) Last year Hot Topic had ones that you could dress up to look like the Joker (the cartoon suit, with the string tie and flower) and I think Batman or maybe some other character, and I think that's the first time I had seen something like that. Other than, you know, children's shirts to dress up like heros or princesses or, idk, Spongebob. I never had any outfits like that so I can't think of any girls' equivalent that you could wear as a tee... Oh, but Hot Topic did have fake boy scout and girl scout looking shirts, with printed merit badge sashes or whatever. Anyway. As a concept, I really like those as "every day" clothes. I mean, if I found a Ghostbusters one to fit, I would wear it all the time because it's that awesome. But as whole-on costumes... they rather bother me. I mean, maybe for wearing to class on Halloween, okay, I could see that. But I feel like the quality of store-bought costumes is already shit, and though I feel like they're getting cheaper in quality (though more expensive), I really have nothing to compare it to because my mom always made mine. And I always make mine, unless they have some super expensive part. And, to be quite honest, a lot of people I've known have made their own or had their parents make theirs, so I don't know the quality of those sorts of costumes from when I was in, say, first grade.
BUT despite my worries about the costuming industry (I mean, for christ's sake, the $149 "stage quality" costumes from those pop-up holiday halloween store fronts are still some of the SHITTIEST material I've ever seen--there's just better stitching and more of it), Halloween is, I believe (that is, I've heard), the fastest growing holiday in America, which to me would be awesome if it would be on par with Christmas. Yay for secular holidays :D
Also I figured out how to get a more accurate Dr. Mrs. The Monarch costume for super cheap and little effort. Yay! The secret is this: not thrift stores, my past prop and costuming love, which still stands strong in my arsenal against reality, but Gabriel Brothers. Well, and stores like them, like T.J. Maxx, but I've only ever been to Gabriel Brothers recently. Why? I got a Ghostbusters-colored coverall for $8. Granted, it's a unisex medium, so it's HUGE, but I can fix that. Finding a cheap coverall? That's the hard part. Also? I scored a bunch of that ghoul-cloth for decorating--you know, the cheese-cloth like stuff that's ripped and shredded and dyed black and stuff--for $2 a piece. As opposed to the $8 it's going for in those cheap-quality Halloween stores.
I mean, if you're going to go for cheap quality, it better be cheap, right? Right. So: Gabriel Brothers and outlet stores like you, you are my new prop and costuming love, because stuff is NEW there. I'm not looking at fashions from 1995, I'm looking at stuff from a year, maybe up to a few months ago. So, finding a black swimsuit for a few bucks that I won't have to alter or paint and I can just stick some colored duct tape on with no concern? An easy task.
...Okay, so actually finding a black suit proved to be difficult. I'm just going to stick with my original plan of my yellow (and pink...) swimsuit and put a black design on it, then just use the black boots and gloves I already have. Works for me.
So today mom and dad went with Laura to the OSU-Wisconsin game, and with all the zombie-etc.-survival stuff I've been thinking on lately, I encountered something you don't normally think of. Cell phone signal. It could be strong, but if there are a whole bunch of people using it, you still might not be able to send stuff. So in emergency situations, what should you do? I don't know, satellite phone or something? I'm guessing wi-fi would be just as bad. BUT it's definitely something to think about, which is a good thing. I enjoy solving puzzles like this.
Hm, Harriet the Spy is on TV. I remember really loving that book, just because I was obsessed with detective stories, but the problem for me was I never had anything to write about being a spy. Plus I learned my lesson that if I didn't want anyone reading it, I shouldn't write it down. Not nearly as bad as she did, but it did happen. Once.
I still don't really have anything like that to write about, but I do like observing the world as it goes by. In which sense, blogging is perfect, you can write about whatever you want on your own terms. In another sense I've always wondered if I should be a psychiatrist or something, because I just like figuring out how the world works, how people work. Idk. I'm rambling.
Anyway, I do have qualms about writing and living and honesty and shit. The world tells you that to live a good life to be honest, but from everything I've seen, nobody's completely honest. Not completely. And, I mean, it bothers me from lots of different points of view. It's actually a huge part of why I'm not Catholic anymore, though that's another rant for another day that I've probably mentioned a few times before anyway. But I've had discussions before about how you can't be completely honest to be socially accepted, because sometimes you think things that shouldn't be said. Which, I mean, sometimes your brain processes come up with some really, really weird shit. And to a point, yes, you should keep it personal. But you should also be willing to admit that your subconscious or tiredness or whatever produced that thought (I don't know how much I believe in subconscious; sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't), but also that you didn't act on it (if it was a so-called "bad thought" or whatever). I mean, like the adage, hate the sin, not the sinner. Don't blame people for being human, just talk through it and move on. I guess what I'm saying is that I think complete disclosure would solve a lot of problems, if people weren't so damn afraid of hiding themselves to be "normal". Not that I'm angry or ranting or trying to start a war of values, but fuck normality. The more you look at it, the more you realize that no one out there is normal.
Political bent: why does it always seem like the people fighting for strict "Values" have the most to hide? Idk, just curious. Is it denial, or do they have some sort of "above the law" god complex? I'm honestly curious because I can't fathom that sort of clash of logic.
Yeah, maybe I should be a psychologist. Oh well, at the rate I'm going it will just be the next thing to take classes on, haha.
Okay... Why can you buy snuggies for dogs. Who decided this was a good, highly marketable idea?
I've been debating whether I should start a new blog for all my links. I don't really want to give up this format but I feel like it would be more interesting and easy to read if each topic were its own post, with a picture and everything. But that would be a lot of work, too.
MORE TAB CLEANUP, ho-ho! I think I finally figured out what the problem is with firefox; I had 237 tabs open, and with Firefox trying to record which tabs were open every few minutes, it was just not handling it well. Let that be a lesson to me to buy a faster compy next time, as well as encouragement to keep fewer tabs open. Woo.
Hitchhiker's Guide turns 30! Can't wait to get my hands on the new book. Definitely will be drinking lots of tea to celebrate too, because I think I'm getting a slight caffiene addiction that's only worsened by my headache tendencies, not to mention that that Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster recipe doesn't look that good.
Sexism At Halloween. Yeah, this bothers me, on two fronts. One, because it's making it popular for girls to be expected to dress "cute" (read: sexy) for Halloween, which of course you can see the problems there. Two, it cheapens Halloween. I mean, Halloween is already being cheapened by shitty-quality costumes; I feel like it's destroying people's creativity on a holiday that is all about imagination. And on a related note, it cheapens the characters themselves. Um, sexy Kreuger? No freaking thank you.
OOOOOR like that "sexy Ghostbuster" costume that came out last year. I feel like that is super offensive to a group of characters who weren't necessarily chauvinist, but who could be seen as sort of role-model-heros for nerds, in a fashion. But now with this costume, it's basically saying "girls aren't capable of this kind of both technical and physical work; rather, they're just eye candy, so here, take these coveralls that cover jack shit".
Although I do like the fact that Mean Girls mocked it, that's definitely a popular movie and they did a good job defending Halloween and creepiness. (Or maybe, these costumes are the scariest of all because they show how uncreative or compromising some folks are willing to be.)
Here are some articles in relation to a recent xkcd strip. Posting them firstly because they are interesting discussion, secondly because they clearly relate to my own issues. I guess because I've never looked into it, but what I simply call paranoia, based on these, could just be your average female's thought process with a little suspense added from a bit too many detective novels in gradeschool. That makes more sense than saying I'm flat-out legitimately paranoid, but it's sad to think that this, then, is an issue for every female. I mean it makes sense, but it just makes me a little more sad that there are so many people who see "feminism" as a slur. (Which also makes me wonder, how did I never grow up thinking that? Just because I cruise around on the internet with my own curiosity, and my parents were never much into heavy social issues or politics? I guess.) (Oops, missed one of my source links.)
On a more exciting note, a reimagining of the periodic table! I've always admired the periodic table from an organizational and mathematical point of view; the way things fit together in nature has always fascinated me, just all the order in the chaos, I suppose.
Being able to grasp and understand that and use it to predict... anything... is fascinating. And anything that will help teach that easier is a much better thing! I am definitely an advocate of changing teaching methods to make more sense to kids, and to be more accurate to the truth. I suppose it's the bias of coming out of a school that didn't teach great critical thinking and never challenged me much (my gradeschool, that is), but considering it'sa good school in comparison to others, that's horrible. And I've always had this sense that teachers don't quite speak the language of students, which is not entirely their fault, but it still stands. I think the main problem is that teachers become so acquainted with the material (or their research) that they are thinking about it in their graduate-level mindset, which, sorry to say, is just not something that elementary-schoolers, high-schoolers, or undergrads understand. We speak one language of questions that someone with a PhD can rarely comprehend, exactly. They're not seeing their teachings from the point of view of someone who's never heard it before. Which is not their fault, but I don't know how many teachers are aware enough of that to try to work around it. Anyway, pet peeve, yes.
Mini-rant time: WHY IS IT SO HARD TO FIND RELATIVELY INEXPENSIVE LACE-UP KNEE HIGH BOOTS THAT DO NOT HAVE ZIPPERS. Everything I find is minimum $200! Or has zippers. And I am not looking for an obscure color like purple or blue or even red, just something a little classier than Doc Martens. Even the uber-awesome $500 pair I found had zips. Damnit. Some day I will find the most perfect pair, I suppose, and drop that money right there and never lose them. Maybe even buy a backup pair, shit son.
So anyone been watching NCIS Los Angeles? Not as good as the other NCIS that Kim and Melissa and I watch like crazy, but, you know, crime shows. They daaamn good. (Except CSI Miami, I'm sorry, but Horatio is super annoying) So anyway, my point: how is this woman NOT the woman who this character was designed after? I mean, when I first read about Incredibles, they mentioned some famous designers she was designed after and I pictured that actress because SHE LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME and I honestly don't follow Hollywood nor fashion that much, so I didn't know she wasn't a designer; only that I'd seen her around, god only knows where, considering I can't place her at all. Anyway, I can't believe that's not her. Crazy.
Dear Fashion Industry, specifically, you Vogue types. I realize high fashion is about concept and ridiculously out-there stuff; it is extreme art and I like it. However, you still consider yourself part of the fashion industry so the fact that you use impossibly thin models as a standard of beauty (yes, actually impossible: they've been photoshopped to the extreme) still impacts the clothes we actually wear. And yes, this jerk has a point that a lot of people don't have a good grasp on health, especially here in the States. But that doesn't separate the fact that dreams and art and beauty is NOT JUST FOR THIN PEOPLE, so get with it.
Always the sustainability freak, a footbridge that powers itself and generates enough power to return some to the grid. Sweet design.
Obama wants to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. I am so confused by this administration; sometimes I love them, and every once in a while they do something very odd (or in the case of Nobel, it happens to them). This, however, is not the latter. =) (Heard they're making progress with New Orleans, though. That's good.)
So remember Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. I fucking love mashups.
Temperature affects how we see relationships, that is CRAZY. I mean, I believe it, but HOLY CRAP, that correlation is very strong in a rather surprising manner.
New DaVinci found! Cool.
Correlation Found Between Sense of Smell and Emotional Sensitivity; the human brain is truly fascinating.
This judge is awesome. Even after reading several depressing accounts about racism and sexism in today's world, this gives me hope and a warm fuzzy feeling. =)
Some about the FTC and the blogging thing, which is an odd fish, to say the least. I admire what they're trying to do, but one, trying to govern the internet (which wants to stay very, very free) is a tough enough (or even impossible) on its own. Let alone that which... they're not planning to act on? Honestly, no one's going to pay attention to something you don't plan on really enforcing. Not that I think they should, I just don't really get what they're going for here.
I am... not sure what to think of this. I don't know the artist--just stumbled across it--but it looks just too damn much like ursulav's art for comfort. I mean, it's one thing to do a piece in honor of something you admire (here, I'm assuming gearworld) or are inspired by, but she doesn't mention that at all, the art style and imagery and nearly exact and I'm pretty sure gearworld is a rather personal thing to ursulav. Idk. I don't want to start shit, and I don't think it's a big enough deal to let ursulav know (no profit, no repeat offendors, idk) but I just have to put it out there. It does... unsettle me.
This postsecret makes me laugh. One, I love the way that Cracked (I think it's Cracked?) has made him into a social icon (not that he wasn't already, but, you know, Teddy 2.0, the badass internet secrethero. Two, that pin on his hat (and collar). I have one (well, will have one) with two ones (11th Ohio cavalry--not the first, which, duh, he started) and that makes me immensely happy. (On a side note, I am dying to get back in uniform, but it's going to be MONTHS. And I realized how much it's going to hurt to age out next summer.)
An article on MIT offering all its courses for free. I love this sort of thing--free information, available anywhere, and I love that it's challenging our scholastic system. My only quandary is how, as we offer things more and more freely, outsourcing our news to blogs and twitter streams and on-the-go up-to-the-second access points, how can we keep this up, fiscally? Free does not a monetary system make. Which is exactly the problem the newspapers are facing, and it's going to hit them first and hardest. Not much for me to say here, it's just something I've been ruminating on every once in a while and I figured I'd put it up for discussion.
(Jesus Christ, tab dumps like these are one of the main reasons I'm considering starting a news blog. Or something. My interests are too broad for it to be drawing to a certain audience more than a personal blog might... and I don't want to be a political discussion blogmeister, so we shall see.)
...I read a lot.
So what do we think of the new layout? I was really, really tired of the old one and I figured I'd let this one sit for awhile for Halloween. I might mix it up a little but we shall see.
This is... odd. While it's commendable that the printers are looking out for illegal activities, like the one guy who was able to stop a potential school killing when he saw pictures of a ridiculous weapons collection, the fact that the police aren't able to separate actual child porn from parents' photos is really sad. The fact that there are multiple similar cases mentioned in the comments (including one that was BREASTFEEDING photos) is ridiculous. I mean, I love the United States and we've got a pretty great thing going on here, far from perfect, but still--we really need to get a grip on our excessive cases. Suing people left and right, wringing malpractice for more than it's worth, I mean, we're just slowly eating away at a great foundation. I hope we really can figure this shit out before we collapse the system. =/
Idk if I posted this before because my computer crashed, but here it is anyway. French MPs want health warnings on airbrushed photographs. Since they're considered the base of all that is high fashion, this is a very good thing IMO. I never realized until someone pointed it out and I sat down and studied it a bit the extent to which advertisements are photoshopped. I didn't even realize such extreme photoshoppery was possible! But they lengthen legs, erase bad skin, and the part that really creeps me out, lengthen necks. It's no longer a case of people comparing themselves to tall and thin models--it's a case of people comparing themselves to almost alien beings (by which I mean the extent to which they've been changed).
I'm worried about Samoa and Hawaii what with the tsunami and everything. =/ I hope things aren't going too badly, and I take the fact that I haven't heard much in the news to be a relatively good thing...
Sometimes, concept art is super cool, or really clever. this is a concept lamp to demonstrate how much energy we waste, and how desperate you would have to be to actually need it.
Uh, did I mention this senator is a chauvinistic douche? I don't think he gets it. Plus, Stabenow's comment is pure winsauce. Definition of epic fo sho.
A saber-toothed squirrel! Holy crap!
Click to viewNASA may have discovered the creation of a planet in the middle of development! Wicked.
The Trapper Kindle. Hilarious. And totally something I would want. (If I had a Kindle, that is.)
Okay, so Walmart and Target have these pretty cool "costume t-shirts" that are a screen printed tee with (or sometimes without) a typical acessory, like a pirate-looking shirt with a bandana, a zombie and vampire shirt with a printed bandana to cover the mouth, an angel shirt with wings, et cetera. I rather admire them for the cleverness, and today I saw a shirt that looks like the ghostbuster's coveralls in the men's section of Target. I almost bought it just to wear for everyday, but I don't think they had one small enough. Plus they said Venkman, and I'm not so much a Venkman fan. (DON'T KILL ME I LIKE BILL MURRAY, HIS ROLES JUST GET ANNOYING SOMETIMES. Like Groundhog day. Anyway.) Last year Hot Topic had ones that you could dress up to look like the Joker (the cartoon suit, with the string tie and flower) and I think Batman or maybe some other character, and I think that's the first time I had seen something like that. Other than, you know, children's shirts to dress up like heros or princesses or, idk, Spongebob. I never had any outfits like that so I can't think of any girls' equivalent that you could wear as a tee... Oh, but Hot Topic did have fake boy scout and girl scout looking shirts, with printed merit badge sashes or whatever. Anyway. As a concept, I really like those as "every day" clothes. I mean, if I found a Ghostbusters one to fit, I would wear it all the time because it's that awesome. But as whole-on costumes... they rather bother me. I mean, maybe for wearing to class on Halloween, okay, I could see that. But I feel like the quality of store-bought costumes is already shit, and though I feel like they're getting cheaper in quality (though more expensive), I really have nothing to compare it to because my mom always made mine. And I always make mine, unless they have some super expensive part. And, to be quite honest, a lot of people I've known have made their own or had their parents make theirs, so I don't know the quality of those sorts of costumes from when I was in, say, first grade.
BUT despite my worries about the costuming industry (I mean, for christ's sake, the $149 "stage quality" costumes from those pop-up holiday halloween store fronts are still some of the SHITTIEST material I've ever seen--there's just better stitching and more of it), Halloween is, I believe (that is, I've heard), the fastest growing holiday in America, which to me would be awesome if it would be on par with Christmas. Yay for secular holidays :D
Also I figured out how to get a more accurate Dr. Mrs. The Monarch costume for super cheap and little effort. Yay! The secret is this: not thrift stores, my past prop and costuming love, which still stands strong in my arsenal against reality, but Gabriel Brothers. Well, and stores like them, like T.J. Maxx, but I've only ever been to Gabriel Brothers recently. Why? I got a Ghostbusters-colored coverall for $8. Granted, it's a unisex medium, so it's HUGE, but I can fix that. Finding a cheap coverall? That's the hard part. Also? I scored a bunch of that ghoul-cloth for decorating--you know, the cheese-cloth like stuff that's ripped and shredded and dyed black and stuff--for $2 a piece. As opposed to the $8 it's going for in those cheap-quality Halloween stores.
I mean, if you're going to go for cheap quality, it better be cheap, right? Right. So: Gabriel Brothers and outlet stores like you, you are my new prop and costuming love, because stuff is NEW there. I'm not looking at fashions from 1995, I'm looking at stuff from a year, maybe up to a few months ago. So, finding a black swimsuit for a few bucks that I won't have to alter or paint and I can just stick some colored duct tape on with no concern? An easy task.
...Okay, so actually finding a black suit proved to be difficult. I'm just going to stick with my original plan of my yellow (and pink...) swimsuit and put a black design on it, then just use the black boots and gloves I already have. Works for me.
So today mom and dad went with Laura to the OSU-Wisconsin game, and with all the zombie-etc.-survival stuff I've been thinking on lately, I encountered something you don't normally think of. Cell phone signal. It could be strong, but if there are a whole bunch of people using it, you still might not be able to send stuff. So in emergency situations, what should you do? I don't know, satellite phone or something? I'm guessing wi-fi would be just as bad. BUT it's definitely something to think about, which is a good thing. I enjoy solving puzzles like this.
Hm, Harriet the Spy is on TV. I remember really loving that book, just because I was obsessed with detective stories, but the problem for me was I never had anything to write about being a spy. Plus I learned my lesson that if I didn't want anyone reading it, I shouldn't write it down. Not nearly as bad as she did, but it did happen. Once.
I still don't really have anything like that to write about, but I do like observing the world as it goes by. In which sense, blogging is perfect, you can write about whatever you want on your own terms. In another sense I've always wondered if I should be a psychiatrist or something, because I just like figuring out how the world works, how people work. Idk. I'm rambling.
Anyway, I do have qualms about writing and living and honesty and shit. The world tells you that to live a good life to be honest, but from everything I've seen, nobody's completely honest. Not completely. And, I mean, it bothers me from lots of different points of view. It's actually a huge part of why I'm not Catholic anymore, though that's another rant for another day that I've probably mentioned a few times before anyway. But I've had discussions before about how you can't be completely honest to be socially accepted, because sometimes you think things that shouldn't be said. Which, I mean, sometimes your brain processes come up with some really, really weird shit. And to a point, yes, you should keep it personal. But you should also be willing to admit that your subconscious or tiredness or whatever produced that thought (I don't know how much I believe in subconscious; sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't), but also that you didn't act on it (if it was a so-called "bad thought" or whatever). I mean, like the adage, hate the sin, not the sinner. Don't blame people for being human, just talk through it and move on. I guess what I'm saying is that I think complete disclosure would solve a lot of problems, if people weren't so damn afraid of hiding themselves to be "normal". Not that I'm angry or ranting or trying to start a war of values, but fuck normality. The more you look at it, the more you realize that no one out there is normal.
Political bent: why does it always seem like the people fighting for strict "Values" have the most to hide? Idk, just curious. Is it denial, or do they have some sort of "above the law" god complex? I'm honestly curious because I can't fathom that sort of clash of logic.
Yeah, maybe I should be a psychologist. Oh well, at the rate I'm going it will just be the next thing to take classes on, haha.
Okay... Why can you buy snuggies for dogs. Who decided this was a good, highly marketable idea?
I've been debating whether I should start a new blog for all my links. I don't really want to give up this format but I feel like it would be more interesting and easy to read if each topic were its own post, with a picture and everything. But that would be a lot of work, too.
MORE TAB CLEANUP, ho-ho! I think I finally figured out what the problem is with firefox; I had 237 tabs open, and with Firefox trying to record which tabs were open every few minutes, it was just not handling it well. Let that be a lesson to me to buy a faster compy next time, as well as encouragement to keep fewer tabs open. Woo.
Hitchhiker's Guide turns 30! Can't wait to get my hands on the new book. Definitely will be drinking lots of tea to celebrate too, because I think I'm getting a slight caffiene addiction that's only worsened by my headache tendencies, not to mention that that Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster recipe doesn't look that good.
Sexism At Halloween. Yeah, this bothers me, on two fronts. One, because it's making it popular for girls to be expected to dress "cute" (read: sexy) for Halloween, which of course you can see the problems there. Two, it cheapens Halloween. I mean, Halloween is already being cheapened by shitty-quality costumes; I feel like it's destroying people's creativity on a holiday that is all about imagination. And on a related note, it cheapens the characters themselves. Um, sexy Kreuger? No freaking thank you.
OOOOOR like that "sexy Ghostbuster" costume that came out last year. I feel like that is super offensive to a group of characters who weren't necessarily chauvinist, but who could be seen as sort of role-model-heros for nerds, in a fashion. But now with this costume, it's basically saying "girls aren't capable of this kind of both technical and physical work; rather, they're just eye candy, so here, take these coveralls that cover jack shit".
Although I do like the fact that Mean Girls mocked it, that's definitely a popular movie and they did a good job defending Halloween and creepiness. (Or maybe, these costumes are the scariest of all because they show how uncreative or compromising some folks are willing to be.)
Here are some articles in relation to a recent xkcd strip. Posting them firstly because they are interesting discussion, secondly because they clearly relate to my own issues. I guess because I've never looked into it, but what I simply call paranoia, based on these, could just be your average female's thought process with a little suspense added from a bit too many detective novels in gradeschool. That makes more sense than saying I'm flat-out legitimately paranoid, but it's sad to think that this, then, is an issue for every female. I mean it makes sense, but it just makes me a little more sad that there are so many people who see "feminism" as a slur. (Which also makes me wonder, how did I never grow up thinking that? Just because I cruise around on the internet with my own curiosity, and my parents were never much into heavy social issues or politics? I guess.) (Oops, missed one of my source links.)
On a more exciting note, a reimagining of the periodic table! I've always admired the periodic table from an organizational and mathematical point of view; the way things fit together in nature has always fascinated me, just all the order in the chaos, I suppose.
Being able to grasp and understand that and use it to predict... anything... is fascinating. And anything that will help teach that easier is a much better thing! I am definitely an advocate of changing teaching methods to make more sense to kids, and to be more accurate to the truth. I suppose it's the bias of coming out of a school that didn't teach great critical thinking and never challenged me much (my gradeschool, that is), but considering it'sa good school in comparison to others, that's horrible. And I've always had this sense that teachers don't quite speak the language of students, which is not entirely their fault, but it still stands. I think the main problem is that teachers become so acquainted with the material (or their research) that they are thinking about it in their graduate-level mindset, which, sorry to say, is just not something that elementary-schoolers, high-schoolers, or undergrads understand. We speak one language of questions that someone with a PhD can rarely comprehend, exactly. They're not seeing their teachings from the point of view of someone who's never heard it before. Which is not their fault, but I don't know how many teachers are aware enough of that to try to work around it. Anyway, pet peeve, yes.
Mini-rant time: WHY IS IT SO HARD TO FIND RELATIVELY INEXPENSIVE LACE-UP KNEE HIGH BOOTS THAT DO NOT HAVE ZIPPERS. Everything I find is minimum $200! Or has zippers. And I am not looking for an obscure color like purple or blue or even red, just something a little classier than Doc Martens. Even the uber-awesome $500 pair I found had zips. Damnit. Some day I will find the most perfect pair, I suppose, and drop that money right there and never lose them. Maybe even buy a backup pair, shit son.
So anyone been watching NCIS Los Angeles? Not as good as the other NCIS that Kim and Melissa and I watch like crazy, but, you know, crime shows. They daaamn good. (Except CSI Miami, I'm sorry, but Horatio is super annoying) So anyway, my point: how is this woman NOT the woman who this character was designed after? I mean, when I first read about Incredibles, they mentioned some famous designers she was designed after and I pictured that actress because SHE LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME and I honestly don't follow Hollywood nor fashion that much, so I didn't know she wasn't a designer; only that I'd seen her around, god only knows where, considering I can't place her at all. Anyway, I can't believe that's not her. Crazy.
Dear Fashion Industry, specifically, you Vogue types. I realize high fashion is about concept and ridiculously out-there stuff; it is extreme art and I like it. However, you still consider yourself part of the fashion industry so the fact that you use impossibly thin models as a standard of beauty (yes, actually impossible: they've been photoshopped to the extreme) still impacts the clothes we actually wear. And yes, this jerk has a point that a lot of people don't have a good grasp on health, especially here in the States. But that doesn't separate the fact that dreams and art and beauty is NOT JUST FOR THIN PEOPLE, so get with it.
Always the sustainability freak, a footbridge that powers itself and generates enough power to return some to the grid. Sweet design.
Obama wants to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. I am so confused by this administration; sometimes I love them, and every once in a while they do something very odd (or in the case of Nobel, it happens to them). This, however, is not the latter. =) (Heard they're making progress with New Orleans, though. That's good.)
So remember Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. I fucking love mashups.
Temperature affects how we see relationships, that is CRAZY. I mean, I believe it, but HOLY CRAP, that correlation is very strong in a rather surprising manner.
New DaVinci found! Cool.
Correlation Found Between Sense of Smell and Emotional Sensitivity; the human brain is truly fascinating.
This judge is awesome. Even after reading several depressing accounts about racism and sexism in today's world, this gives me hope and a warm fuzzy feeling. =)
Some about the FTC and the blogging thing, which is an odd fish, to say the least. I admire what they're trying to do, but one, trying to govern the internet (which wants to stay very, very free) is a tough enough (or even impossible) on its own. Let alone that which... they're not planning to act on? Honestly, no one's going to pay attention to something you don't plan on really enforcing. Not that I think they should, I just don't really get what they're going for here.
I am... not sure what to think of this. I don't know the artist--just stumbled across it--but it looks just too damn much like ursulav's art for comfort. I mean, it's one thing to do a piece in honor of something you admire (here, I'm assuming gearworld) or are inspired by, but she doesn't mention that at all, the art style and imagery and nearly exact and I'm pretty sure gearworld is a rather personal thing to ursulav. Idk. I don't want to start shit, and I don't think it's a big enough deal to let ursulav know (no profit, no repeat offendors, idk) but I just have to put it out there. It does... unsettle me.
This postsecret makes me laugh. One, I love the way that Cracked (I think it's Cracked?) has made him into a social icon (not that he wasn't already, but, you know, Teddy 2.0, the badass internet secrethero. Two, that pin on his hat (and collar). I have one (well, will have one) with two ones (11th Ohio cavalry--not the first, which, duh, he started) and that makes me immensely happy. (On a side note, I am dying to get back in uniform, but it's going to be MONTHS. And I realized how much it's going to hurt to age out next summer.)
An article on MIT offering all its courses for free. I love this sort of thing--free information, available anywhere, and I love that it's challenging our scholastic system. My only quandary is how, as we offer things more and more freely, outsourcing our news to blogs and twitter streams and on-the-go up-to-the-second access points, how can we keep this up, fiscally? Free does not a monetary system make. Which is exactly the problem the newspapers are facing, and it's going to hit them first and hardest. Not much for me to say here, it's just something I've been ruminating on every once in a while and I figured I'd put it up for discussion.
(Jesus Christ, tab dumps like these are one of the main reasons I'm considering starting a news blog. Or something. My interests are too broad for it to be drawing to a certain audience more than a personal blog might... and I don't want to be a political discussion blogmeister, so we shall see.)
...I read a lot.