From Sasha:
speaking of insects, an artist named Joseph Scheer has figured out a way to put moths on a scanner to create high-res images. he's come out with a book and the images are pretty miraculous. i love the way that the little fibers of their bodies get flattened against the scanner glass.
Wholemovment models made from 9"diameter paper plates. Check it out. Its cool.
Posted to the Squid List:
San Francisco conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has recently announced that he has filed with the United States Copyright Office for intellectual property protection on his mind. Because Title 17 of the United States Code stipulates that copyright "endures for a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author's death", experts have calculated that Jonathon Keats's mind will survive, legally speaking, for precisely seven decades after his body stops working. In order to exploit this opportunity, he will transfer all intellectual property rights to the Jonathon Keats Holding Company immediately upon his death. Operating expenses for the Holding Company will be covered by the sale of Keats's brain. An initial public offering of futures contracts on his neurons -- at a premium of 1/1000 of a cent per neuron, against a 1 cent per neuron postmortem strike price -- will take place at the Modernism art gallery, 685 Market Street, San Francisco, on Thursday, October 23rd between 5:30 and 8:00. Refreshments will be served.
See the prospectus
Read about the project on Wired News
This Report by Operative Theta7/Gamara-Esh-Sol Sector Mr. Banks is topping my list of weirdest things I've found on the web so far, beating out the Rubber Chicken Tower, recently resurected at The Internet Wayback Machine.
The Language Genome Project is applying techniques used to determine inheritance from DNA to languages, and coming up with some interesting results.
Trade Wars: The Exaggerated Impact of Trade in Economic Debate a paper byRichard Freeman examines how both protesters and financial institutions alike are focusing on the wrong thing. WTO policies have minimal impact on the welfare of citizens in developing countries; more important are technology transfer, international migration and financial crisis.
You can almost hear the Nike machines cranking into overdrive. But he makes a good, and true, point.
---- Abstract -----
The rules governing trade and capital flows have been at the center of controversy as globalization has proceeded. One reason is the belief that trade and capital flows have massive effects on the labor market -- either positive, per the claims of international financial institutions and free trade enthusiasts, or negative, per the ubiquitous protestors at WTO, IMF, and World Bank meetings demanding global labor standards. Comparing the claims made in this debate with the outcomes of trade agreements, this paper finds that the debate has exaggerated the effects of trade on economies and the labor market. Changes in trade policy have had modest impacts on labour market. Other aspects of globalization -- immigration, capital flows, and technology transfer -- have greater impacts, with volatile capital flows creating great risk for the well-being of workers. As for labor standards, global standards do not threaten the comparative advantage of developing countries nor do poor labor standards create a race to the bottom'.
Chances are you've heard about this already, it's causing quite an uproar.
The thing that really pisses me off is it's not just benign, you know. Ignorance kills.
Spreading the word to these countires is really really difficult b/c the ones most ravaged by AIDS tend to be poor and technologically stunted. I guess I'm looking to those of you interested in information theory for answers.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/religion_condoms_dc
LONDON (Reuters) - The lives of Roman Catholics in some of the countries worst hit by HIV/AIDS are being put at even greater risk by advice from their churches that the use of condoms does not prevent transmission of the disease, according to a British television program.
A Linux Distro for Barbie?, is a funny article covering the psychology of girls 4 - 11 and the specs of a new linux desktop.
The next Barbie B-Book desktop will be running BarbieOS 1.0, a linux desktop environment with ReiserFS, KDE, GRUB, ...
"If Barbie were a career-focused woman working in the IT industry in 2003, she would support open standards," he says. "She would be seeking out free and open-source alternatives to current proprietary solutions, saving her company tens of thousands of dollars on management headaches associated with tracking software licenses and preparing for BSA audits. She would be looking at deploying Linux clients on the desktop and Linux servers in the back office. She wouldn't be willing to sacrifice power for features, and she would demand a system that is stable, secure, and easily configurable.""Barbie would also be tired of Microsoft's licensing bullshit," he added.