ideometric

This blog (Kotaji) has good coverage of the Korean beef protests, among other things.

IT staff routinely snoop on users, riffling through their e-mails and personal files, a newly released survey has found.

Few ordinary users realize that one in three of their IT work colleagues are snooping through company systems, peeking at confidential information such as your private files, wage data, personal e-mails, and HR background, using admin privileges.

Source

The Associated Press has decided that fair use no longer applies to them, and is attempting to charge $12.50 (and up) to quote as little as 5 words from an article.

This is an example of the tension embedded in new media, between cultural autonomy, democratization, and the enhancement of capability on the one hand, versus the creation of potentially more invasive methods of control, censorship, cooptation, and extraction of profit on the other. It’s a political issue (at the very least). We need smart policies regulating technology and communications, and smart laws protecting our rights.

This post from Making Light sketches the alternative…

“Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.

Welcome to a world in which you won’t own any of your technology or your music or your books, because ensuring that someone makes their profit margins will justify depriving you of the even the most basic, commonsensical rights in your personal, hand-level household goods.”

In the same vein, Bruce Schneier echoes this concern in light of wider designs for embedded limitations, such as kill-switches in OnStar that can remotely shut-off your car, or overrides in your cell-phones and other gear that might forcibly set them to silent in a movie theater, or turn them off in an airplane, (etc.).

“This is really about media companies wanting to exert their control further over your electronics. They not only want to prevent you from surreptitiously recording movies and concerts, they want your new television to enforce good “manners” on your computer, and not allow it to record any programs. They want your iPod to politely refuse to copy music to a computer other than your own. They want to enforce their legislated definition of manners: to control what you do and when you do it, and to charge you repeatedly for the privilege whenever possible.”

“…recently, research has found coffee drinking linked with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and some cancers, and preventing the development of cardiovascular disease”

“some compounds, such as the antioxidants found in coffee, may be healthy.”

Now I don’t feel so bad. Source

The interface design for Google’s new live stock market app is pretty slick. All kinds of information convergence happening. Notice the way it links to news stories on top of the graph of the stock price.

If I were the type of guy that would spend $35 on a pen, I’d be all over this. But alas I’m not, so I will admire its modern, self-contained, elegant simplicity from afar, while I plod away with my “borrowed” Bics and Uniballs.

Obama had an 11 page essay in Foreign Affairs’ July/Aug 2007 issue. Dig the cosmopolitan, democratic emphasis. (Here, behind pay-wall).

America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, and the world cannot meet them without America. We can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission. We must lead the world, by deed and by example.

Such leadership demands that we retrieve a fundamental insight of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy — one that is truer now than ever before: the security and well-being of each and every American depend on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders. The mission of the United States is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding that the world shares a common security and a common humanity.

THE magazine is yet another trend-spotting zine, but it’s pretty accessible, had a few things that I found genuinely interesting, and the hype is kept at a bearable level.

Found via 

Came across this at Yolk in Silverlake. Rechargeable. It’s impractically practical, a perfect embodiment of “nonsequitor” as design philosophy. I want to get one and keep it in my car as an emergency flashlight.

Nothing like an illuminated pig snout to get you through an emergency.

$12 ish @ Yolk. Or $9 plus shipping here. You can find it online for 99cents direct from China/Hong Kong, though only in reject color schemes like green and purple.

Graduating in a week, time to figure out what I want to read for fun! These sound good. SUGGESTIONS WELCOME, RANDOM INTERNET PEOPLE! I need more non-fiction.

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler (nice, it’s available as a free PDF).

“In Benkler’s view, the new “networked information economy” allows individuals and groups to be more productive than profit-seeking ventures. New types of collaboration, such as Wikipedia or SETI@Home, “offer defined improvements in autonomy, democratic discourse, cultural creation, and justice”-as long as government regulation aimed at protecting old-school information monoliths (such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) doesn’t succeed.”

The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson

“This volume, his manifesto to the public at large, is a meditation on the splendor of our biosphere and the dangers we pose to it. In graceful, expressive and vigorous prose, Wilson argues that the challenge of the new century will be “to raise the poor to a decent standard of living worldwide while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible.” For as America consumes and the Third World tries to keep up, we lose biological diversity at an alarming rate. But the “trajectory” of species loss depends on human choice. If current levels of consumption continue, half the planet’s remaining species will be gone by mid-century. Wilson argues that the “great dilemma of environmental reasoning” stems from the conflict between environmentalism and economics, between long-term and short-term values. Conservation, he writes, is necessary for our long-term health and prosperity.”

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

“…a cerebral page-turner that pits corporeal man against metaphysical sharks that devour memory and essence, not flesh and blood. When Eric Sanderson wakes from a lengthy unconsciousness, he has no memory. A letter from “The First Eric Sanderson” directs him to psychologist Dr. Randle, who tells Eric he is afflicted with a “dissociative condition.” Eric learns about his former life—specifically a glorious romance with girlfriend Clio Aames, who drowned three years earlier—and is soon on the run from the Ludovician, a “species of purely conceptual fish” that “feeds on human memories and the intrinsic sense of self.” Once he hooks up with Scout, a young woman on the run from her own metaphysical predator, the two trek through a subterranean labyrinth made of telephone directories (masses of words offer protection, as do Dictaphone recordings), decode encrypted communications and encounter a series of strange characters on the way to the big-bang showdown with the beast.

There’s echoes of Cyberpunk, Borges, Auster; there is adventure on the high seas, lost love, an exploration of what it means to be human in the age of intelligent machines. “

Grid Systems in Graphic Design

“A Visual Communication Manual for graphic designers, typographers and three dimensional designers. Considered by most to be the definitive book on grid systems. This book is a must for any designer. “

The Graphic Artist and his Design Problems

In this book, Josef Muller-Brockmann intends to show the nature and the meaning of the design elements in typography, drawing and photography in advertising. An important visual tool that will give open-minded designers a worthwhile survey of the fundamental problems of design.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

“Murakami’s 12th work of fiction is darkly entertaining and more novella than novel. Taking place over seven hours of a Tokyo night, it intercuts three loosely related stories, linked by Murakami’s signature magical-realist absurd coincidences. When amateur trombonist and soon-to-be law student Tetsuya Takahashi walks into a late-night Denny’s…..”

And maybe these too:

• The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria
• Espresso Coffee: The Science of Quality - Andrea Illy
• The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World By John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan
• How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas By David Bornstein

Some massive protests happening over attempts to end ban on US beef imports, which, in part, is seen as a concession in the negotiation of a free trade agreement between the US and Korea. More info. And another article here.

I’m planning to build a cafe racer over the summer. This is an animated mock up I made. I took the photo of the stock bike and painted over it in photoshop to show what I want to do to it (bigger version here).

I think the bike will cost around $1500, plus another ~$500 to pick up a cafe style seat and new exhaust, etc.

With gas prices set to tick past $5/gallon, a 40+mpg bike sounds good to me.

After browsing through random food blogs, I feel compelled to meticulously and artistically document every mundane detail of life.

Plus photography is like instant gratification. Drawing or painting takes forever. This is like click click click - maybe a little processing in Photoshop - and bam, finished. Atleast that’s the plan… so now I’m saving for a D40.

Some random girl in China uploaded a 4 minute video clip of herself ranting at the victims of the earthquake. I guess her name and address have already been publicized. It sounds like the makings of another e-vigilante story (see Korean dog poop lady for another example). Video with English subs below.

BEIJING, May 23 (Xinhua) — When a video clip surfaced on YouTube showing Zhang Ya cursing Wenchuan earthquake victims with lots of profane words, a small earthquake was triggered in China’s Internet community.

Millions of Chinese Internet users posted furious condemnation messages, accusing the 21-year-old girl of “no humanity,” “insulting the victims” and calling her “scum”.

In the near-5-minute video, Zhang, a native of Shenyang, capital of the northeastern Liaoning Province, showed that she was annoyed with the three day period of national mourning during which she could neither watch her favorite television programs nor play any games online. Shockingly, the girl chose to vent her anger through throwing nasty words upon the victims of the Sichuan quake, whose number has now topped 55,000.

Source: Xinhua
(The article is interesting too, it talks about the role of the net and grass-roots self-organizing in response to the earthquake).

But here’s the video…