Clash

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Mike pointed out this story about yet another schoolboard talking about a ban on body piercing. They don't seem to realize that the more they ban it the cooler it gets — want to stop kids from getting piercings? Don't tell them they're not allowed — encourage all your teachers to do it too. That'll make it so uncool it'll stop immediately, except on the kids that need piercings.

Board member Bob Markwell, who is also a physician, had two questions, "One, is it really creating health problems? Two, is it disruptive to the educational process? Or is it just a generational gap?"

And yes, I realize that might be seen as three questions, but at least it's a reasonable course of thinking for a change.

I wanted to mention an interesting QOD-type story that had been brought to my attention lately. I'll paraphase the question here:

Lately all of the latex at our studio has been breaking down — gloves tearing and crumbling when we put them on and stuff like that. The only different thing is that we've been running our de-ionizing air cleaner 24/7. Have you ever heard of anything like this?

I'd actually never heard of anything like this, so I did some asking around and Tom Brazda pointed out that one of the side-effects of these air cleaners is producing ozone. Ozone speeds up oxidation, which thereby breaks down the latex.

I'm headed off to Toronto shortly for Liam's CLASH show. The opening is tonight at the “a” gallery (or something like that)… It's located at 24 Spadina Road (the part of Spadina that's north of Bloor) at the opening is at 6 PM. The show continues until January 10th. Anyway, I'm quite looking forward to it and I've picked up a little low-tech tape recorder to use to interview with so if it turns out I'll BMEradio it, and if not, it'll be in my next column.

Consider stopping by if you're in the area… And I think you should probably dress nice, but I don't know. Not that I have any “nice” clothes. Maybe I can find something with buttons at least.

PS. Does it amuse anyone that the US is inspired by the Nazis?

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Killing hobos

Tuesday, November 18, 2003


I've been pre-processing all the submissions for the update (on Friday I think)… Wanted to share the kooky mail I got (above) as well as the picture below which is 100% real and not doctored at all.

Since the people in the picture have been in the BME galleries for some time, maybe it's not quite as “waaaah?” as it might be for some, but it's a fun photo I thought.

The debate over in the cosmetic surgery forum is fascinating… Maybe it's because my interest is body modification more so than piercing or tattooing in order to “look the part” of hip young indie-kid or whatever, but I find it truly bizarre that people with tattoos would take issue with a person who wants a boob-job or whatever other cosmetic procedure is out there…

As far as I'm concerned, if there's a procedure that makes a person happier in their body, I say go for it. Get a tattoo, and a bunch of people without tattoos have problems with you. Get “perfect breasts”, and a bunch of people without “perfect breasts” will have problems with you. I mean, I understand that one could worry that someone is getting a “societally perfect” body because other people told them too (that's my only issue with cosmetic surgery — that in some cases it's in effect non-consensual), but it wouldn't be the “societally perfect” body unless a significant number of people genuinely preferred straight teeth, evenly shaped large breasts, or whatever else…

Now, that doesn't mean that you can't be stunningly beautiful at four hundred pounds or without breasts or with a page out of the big book of British smiles for a mouth — what it means is that different people like different things… And maybe instead of saying “oh that's horrible, why would you want to have such perky breasts?”, perhaps a “cool breasts, check out my tattoo, isn't it neat-o?” comment might help us a bit more?

Anyway.

I just think it's really weird that when a lot of people here see a tattoo they're happy for the person, but when they see a nosejob they say stuff like “why can't you just be happy the way you are?” Sadly I think it may be a reflection on why the people asking the question got into tattoos in the first place… a kind of a “better to rule in hell than serve in heaven” kind of self-esteem issue. But I don't want to play pop psychologist today.

If you're on the anti-surgery side, please just think how you feel when people approach you with comments like “oh, tattoos just look so bad… and they really look bad a few years down the road… it's too bad you can't just be happy the way the good lord made you…”

It's interesting — it almost feels like people think it's OK to attack this type of body modification. It's sort of like how you “can” make fun of East Indians on TV and people don't peg you as the racist that you are. Why is that? Do we need a little hypocrisy in part of our lives to keep it out of the rest? Maybe one day a year we should go kill a hobo to keep us polite the rest of the year?

Oh wait, I've revealed too much about my good manners.

entry terminated

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CHOP … Bzzzzzzzzzzz…..

Monday, November 17, 2003



Check out who's been outside chainsawing… (Not me; Rachel)

First, if you want to see something crazy, check out Orbax's page and look at the burn pictures, espcially the first ones… You may not have known this, but you can actually cut his arm off and after about two weeks, another one grows back. It's crazy, I've not seen any other real humans that can do that.

Anyway, I ran a poll a little while back asking, “is it acceptable to cut off a part of your child's genitals?” Not surprisingly, 73% of people said it was never acceptable. 21% would accept it given the right culture, and 6% had no problem with it whatsoever. I followed this up with “is it acceptable to circumcise your child?” Now, it's basically the same question, just asked using different words, but the results were dramatically different — only 47% objected to the idea, with fully 34% having no problem with it whatsoever (19% accepted it given the right culture).

I also ran a follow up poll and it turned out at 14% of people didn't know that circumcision involved the removal of genital tissue (how is that even possible?), and 4% of those refused to believe that it did! My personal take on it is that if someone gets or is given any modification, they should have to be old enough to consent and want it… and that includes circumcision except when medically needed (which is extremely rare of course).

Anyway, I might do a few more experiments in the future seeing how people answer the same question differently depending on how it's worded. For example, I'll bet that if you asked “is it acceptable to kill someone who has committed a very serious crime?” you'd get a different response from “is the death penalty acceptable in the case of very serious crimes?”… And those two are really closely worded.

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Working…

Sunday, November 16, 2003

Since there's some discussion of the technical aspects of using/quoting parts of BME in research projects, I've built in tools to make that easier in the encyclopedia. Now when you click the “revision history” link on any of the entries, it'll tell you exactly what you need to write. For example, here's a simple one, but it also handles complex entries with multiple authors and revision dates like this one that Chris and I co-wrote.

Also, I don't know how many of you read typealice's mygambia blog (which I think I've recommended here before), but I got this postcard from her and I wanted to share some of what was written (I hope that's OK) because I think it's an important thing for folks to read:


People work hard here. Selling fish, oranges, peanuts, fixing cars, reusing metal and plastics. Nothing is going to waste, nothing is thrown away. Everyone has a skill.

The pace is slow. Greetings are such a huge part of the culture, it makes me realize how cold we are to one another in the Western world. Although this is one of the world's poorest countries, the people are always happy.

Makes me think that we've got it all wrong at home.

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November 16th, 2003

Sunday, November 16, 2003


I don't normally promote specific events here, but in this case I'm making an exception. Those of you in Holland or surrounding I really want to recommend the Dutch Meet and Ego Kornus Performance on December 20th. Click here for more information; there will also be discussions of future events in the area and more! I got to meet Kor while in Amsterdam and really have nothing but good things to say!

Saw a weird comment on ./ last night… In a discussion of Google Code Jam, someone was upset about the winnings — not a single American had been able to place with the awards going to Europeans, Scandinavians, and a Canadian (this is fairly normal on the TopCoder competitions; it's fairly rare for Americans to rank — although I think it's important to point out that the numbers may be skewed because of the volume).

Last time I checked, Google was an AMERICAN company. You think that they would have the decency or the patriotism to give at least one award to an AMERICAN. Sorry Google but you are no longer my search engine of choice. Altavista here I come.

It just seemed kind of weird that one would expect that the “decent” thing to do would be to give an award to an unqualified person as a form of national pride — or that when seeking a tool, quality of engineering is less important than nationalism… I don't know about you, but if “my team” doesn't have a winner this season, it would be kind of embarassing to have a sham victory. It would make us look kind of dumb…

SNL's opening last night was disturbing (maybe not as disturbing as the fact that they've had Alec Baldwin host eleven times now)… Just a weird upsetting and not-at-all-funny parody of Bush going on about killing Americans, screwing them over, things getting worse and worse, the elections all being rigged, and so on. SNL is definitely not a part of the right wing media conspiracy it seems.

Things continue to get decidedly worse in Iraq, with another successful guerrilla attack downing two black hawk helicopters (more, more) killing almost twenty more Americans — and, perhaps more dangerously, allowing the guerrillas to show the population that they can win. As long as these types of small victories continue, the guerrillas can keep recruiting people (more, more) for more:

"What difference does it make? If they arrest two [from the resistance], another 100 will take their place."

Not a nice thing to read alongside stories about National Guardsmen being sent over for the long haul (more), talking about how important it is to them to spend time with their kids because they just might not be coming back.

When National Guardsman John Schreiber learned he could be sent to Iraq before Christmas, his 7-year-old son told him, "Dad, you're going to die."

Also stateside, the Republicans are funnelling money from children's charities into late-night neocon parties (more) — it's crazy, it just sounds so Cruella DeVille, but it's real! The thing I don't get about this is that it's so self-destructive. I think it was Seymour Hersh that pointed out recently that Bush won't get (legally) re-elected because “you have a war fought by the underclass, financed by the underclass and for the profit of the upperclass.”

So the question that's really being answered right now in America is,
“does the underclass have a voice?”

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