Salivated
A Kuro5hin story about Lycanthropy was put up today and is very interesting.#
Zoological problems aside, the question remains as to why people experience lycanthropy at all. Psychosis is certainly a strange fish, and the bizarre and uncanny are not unusual in this state. Nevertheless, simply defining it as just 'another type of weird' does not get us any further along the way to explaining its formation and development.
One important factor may be differences or changes in parts of the brain known to be involved in representing body shape. A brain scanning study of two people with lycanthropy showed that these areas display unusual activation, suggesting that when people report their bodies are changing shape, they may be genuinely perceiving those feelings. Body shape distortions are not unknown in mental and neurological illness, so this may help explain at least part of the process. One further puzzle is why an affected person doesn't simply report that their body "feels like it's changing in odd ways", rather than presenting with a delusional belief that they are changing into a specific animal. There is much evidence that psychosis is more than just odd perceptual experiences so perhaps lycanthropy is the result of these unusual bodily experiences being understood by an already mixed-up mind.
Alex Tabarrok puts it very well:#
The market is often accused of under-providing safety. Consider, however, that the Department of Agriculture is refusing to let a Kansas beef producer test its cattle for mad cow disease. Yes, you read that right. The producer, Creekstone Farms, is losing $40,000 a day because it exports its beef to Japan where such tests are required. The testing of individual cattle, however, runs contrary to the DOA/industry message that American beef is perfectly safe without expensive testing.
Richard of Canada links to Mark Steyn discussing Iraq and British Imperialism.#
I know how the Prof feels. After 9/11, I wasted many months urging formal imperialism on the Americans. The hands-off approach — "He may be a sonofabitch but he's our sonofabitch" — gave us the House of Saud and most of our present troubles. Better to kit out the chaps from the Beltway think-tanks in solar topees and ostrich feathers and make American imperialism an administrative reality. It could hardly get a worse press than the informal, cultural imperialism of hamburgers and "Dude, Where's My Car?" that provoked Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the former French defence minister, to claim America was dedicated to "the organised cretinisation of our people". Might as well make the cretinisation more organised, I'd say.
But no takers. America hasn't an imperialist bone in its body. For one thing, there's nobody to staff an imperial governing class. If you were the average 19th-century Englishman, life in the colonies had plenty of attractions: more land, better weather, the opportunity to escape the constraints of class. None of these factors applies to the average 21st-century American: if you're in Maine and you're sick of it, you can move to Hawaii rather than the Malay states.
Rich Ditty also linked to an interview with Marty Beckerman.#
I'm not going to say that Clinton getting blowjobs from a girl his daughter's age led directly to 50 percent of 13-year-olds having oral sex, because I think there's more going on here. We grew up in Utopia, with unprecedented prosperity, peace and opportunities. And instead of becoming the greatest American generation, we became the most hedonistic and self-indulgent. And I'm not against fun, I'm not against sex -- I'm very careful to say that I've got a girlfriend and I like to put my dizznick in her fuckity-slit whenever possible -- but human beings aren't wired to have anonymous partners every single time. That's the real problem -- not the fact kids are having sex, because kids have always had sex. The problem is that none of them care about anyone else, and hardly any of them care about themselves. This has to be the first generation in American history where the majority could be diagnosed as mentally ill, if not totally schizophrenic.
The numbers of self-mutilators, the numbers of suicide attempts -- which is now 10 percent -- why are these people so fucking sad and crazy, and have so many emotional disorders, and so scared of emotional attachments? The thing we're lacking is identity. No one has a sense of self, and no one wants to have a sense of self, and people need to have a sense of self. You know, you reach out to Abercrombie, put their brand name across your chest and now you have an identity. There's no passion, no sense of self, and that's leading these people to be fucking crazy, because they don't have the basic things that human beings have always had. That was a good long rant. Now I should say something funny about my dick or something.
Matt May talks on accessibility and putting hope in Google.#
This is why designers and developers need to know more about accessibility than how to find and silence an evaluation tool. With Web applications, it is not only about adding alt this and accesskey that. It is about creating a user experience that makes sense to a large number of users. And that number gets bigger when you take into account the browsers that won't support all the bells and whistles, and the mobile phones and handheld devices that are being picked up by the millions. The Web is past the age of "this site best viewed at 800x600 and up."
I think Google has it in them to do the right thing with Gmail. The interface alone is simple enough: folders, message lists, textarea for composing messages, ad section that snoops on you. In order to be at least somewhat accessible, it needs to function without script, and preferably without frames. The amount of server magic required there should be easily implementable by any Google employee: it consists of logical interfaces that work whether they're driven by a scripted site or not.
To quote Tracy Chapman, love means: "if I tell you the right words at the right time, you'll be mine." I didn't find true love with some L.A. lifeguard who sauntered up to me on the beach and whispered I was the woman he had always wanted. I didn't give myself and my life to a man who had all the right words (or right moves) at the right time. I married a man who loved me. And I loved him. It wasn't all roses and romance - although I did get some of that too. It was bumpy and uncomfortable at times. Yet Ted is someone who saw me as I was (no swimsuit model or perfect poet myself) and still wanted me. He's the best friend I always wanted from a book. No - he's better ;)
When you find the real thing, it's better than any fantasy. Because it's real. And it makes all the artificial images seem so fake.
Philip Greenspun makes a parody of political correctness.#
"How come you are so mean, mommy?" Heather asked.
"Don't say 'mean', Heather; I prefer 'aggression-enhanced.'" Crystal corrected. "It is probably because I used to be a man's girlfriend, er... unpaid sex worker. Actually, the best term to use is probably acquaintance rape survivor."
"How come that man next to us has such a big lens," Heather asked. "Is he sexually inadequate?"
"Remember not to be judgmental, Heather," Crystal replied. "Just because a white oppressor has a lens that costs and weighs more than a used car, that doesn't mean he is performance-challenged."