08w10:2 Nullos Posted March 3rd, 2008 by timothy. 1 Comment Goodreads | 2008 week 10 number 2 (Nullos) I learned about Nullos through this Reddit link (included for its comment thread): http://el.reddit.com/info/67yf7/comments/ It linked to a copy of this article (itself pretty graphic): Interview with a Nullo http://www.eunuch.org/Alpha/I/ea_25408intervie.htm And the thread has link to these images (NSFW, graphic, I warned you): http://www.bmezine.com/service/samples/tour4.html This one being the most remarkable (a living Ken Doll): http://www.bmezine.com/service/samples/nullohigh/penec3.jpg And testimony from some anonymous who wants to have it done: “Where do I begin? Well I am 20 years old and I have a very strong desire to become a nullo. Preferably a genital nullo, which means Removal of the genitals and relocation of the urethra. Leaving a smooth surface. some people refer to people who have genital nullo as “smoothies”! This desire started when I was a child and only progressed when I went into my teen years. I remember perfectly when I was about 8, how I would look at my penis and testicles and pretend there was nothing there. I never thought about cutting it off or a preferred term, surgical removal. Because at age 8, I just pretended that it wasn’t there. Several years pass and I turn 13. By then I have hit puberty and I am getting normal erections.”
08w07:7 How Porn Ruined Sex Posted February 16th, 2008 by timothy. 0 Comments Goodreads | 2008 week 07 number 7 (How Porn Ruined Sex) How Porn Ruined Sex | Moe @ Jezebel.Com http://goodreads.ca/shorty/jezebel/porn/
08w03:1 The Moral Instinct Posted January 13th, 2008 by timothy. 1 Comment Goodreads | 2008 week 03 number 1 (The Moral Instinct) The Moral Instinct | Steven Pinker Link (New York Times Magazine) “Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. […] Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care. […] The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave. Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral (‘killing is wrong’), rather than merely disagreeable (‘I hate brussels sprouts’), unfashionable (‘bell-bottoms are out’) or imprudent (‘don’t scratch mosquito bites’). The first hallmark of moralization is that the rules it invokes are felt to be universal. Prohibitions of rape and murder, for example, are felt not to be matters of local custom but to be universally and objectively warranted.”
07w50:5 The Evolutionary Wild Fire Posted December 15th, 2007 by timothy. 0 Comments Goodreads | 2007 week 50 number 5 (The Evolutionary Wild Fire) It began on December 10th, with two articles: Are humans evolving faster? http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uou-ahe120607.php Genome study places modern humans in the evolutionary fast lane http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uow-gsp120507.php and then was picked up by Scientific American, the Houston Chronicle, ABC News, the Huffington PostM, Arts Journal.com, and Reuters. The next day on December 11th, Bruce Sterling posts on this in his blog, liking to the coverage in the LA Times. The New York Times of course has it, and Drudgereport links to the Yahoo version. Slashdot links to the Reuters story. The BBC picks it up as well. Drudge Retort links to the story in the Houston Chronicle. 2Blowhards links to the original research paper (PDF), with supporting links to the LA Times story, the PR, (via Steve Sailer), John Hawks’ blog, and Scientific American. Andrew Sullivan gets in the game. William Saletan blogs it in his Slate column. Wednesday Dec 12th brings one link to the acceleration story, by mcmath61 at Plastic.com. However, on December 12th the New York Times reports on another evolutionary story, as to the adaptation of a women’s spine to bipedal pregnancy. This news release at Eureka Alert suggests the loss of fur (and hence the loss of the ape’s tendency to have babies clinging to the fur) encouraged the development of that bipedality. CNN picks up the pregnancy story, The Eureka Alert press release on the adaptive spine goes out on the following day, December 13th, and the New York Times reprints a slightly altered version of their previous day’s take. The Boston Globe writes up the pregnancy story, and the Globe & Mail reproduces it. Jason Kottke gets on the Accelerated Evolution bandwagon on this day, linking to the New York Times article, as does Slashdot. The Economist does its write-up. Finally, on December 14th, William Saletan picks up the theme and writes about it in a piece called The Evolution of Evolution.
07w41:3 Which way is she spinning? Posted October 11th, 2007 by timothy. 0 Comments Goodreads | 2007 week 41 number 3 (Which way is she spinning?) via
06w16:2 Ellen Dissanayake Posted April 18th, 2006 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 16 number 2 (Ellen Dissanayake) ——————————————————————— The Artistic Animal | Caleb Crain http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/calebcrain/artistic1 “But is art a well-defined category for biological study? In its freedom from social rules, art resembles play, while in its emphasis on display and embellishment, it resembles ritual. Art, play, and ritual benefit different individuals in different ways, however. Art enhances an artist’s prestige, play is linked to learning in juveniles, and ritual achieves a large number of social aims, from mourning to coronation. To focus her inquiry, Dissanayake has picked out a common element: During all three activities, humans make something special. That is, they distinguish an object or action from the ordinary. ‘What’s interesting about humans,’ Dissanayake says, ‘is that they gild the lily. They do more than is necessary.’ ‘Making special,’ rather than ‘art,’ is the behavior Dissanayake studies.” The Core of Art: Making Special | Ellen Dissanayake http://tinyurl.com/lkj9t “Previously, the sorts of objects that in the post-eighteenth century West came to be called art—paintings, sculptures, ceramics, music, dance, poetry, and so forth—were made to embody or to reinforce religious or civic values, and rarely, if ever, for purely aesthetic purposes. Paintings and sculptures served as portraits, illustrations, interior or exterior decoration; ceramics were vessels for use; music and dance were part of a ceremonial or special social occasion; poetry was storytelling or praise or oratory to sway an audience. Even when beauty, skill, or ostentation were important qualities of an object, they did not exist ‘for their own sake,’ but as an enhancement of the object’s ostensible if not actual use. This enhancement would be called beautification or adornment, not art. The word art as used before the late eighteenth century meant what we would today call ‘craft’ or ‘skill’ or ‘well-madeness,’ and could characterize any object or activity made or performed by human (rather than natural or divine) agency—for example, the art of medicine, of retailing, of holiday dining. It may be a surprise to realize how peculiar our modern Western notion of art really is—how it is dependent on and intertwined with ideas of commerce, commodity, ownership, history, progress, specialization, and individuality—and to recognize the truth that only a few societies have thought of it even remotely as we do.” NOTE: tinyurl links to 249K PDF, 26 pages —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyUrl (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 18 April 2006 @ 10:07 PM
06w16:1 Inventions of the March Hare Posted April 17th, 2006 by timothy. 1 Comment Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 16 number 1 (inventions of the march hare) April is the cruelest month, supposedly. But I found March pretty shity. Which is why these didn’t get sent. This is the ‘lost Goodreads March Collection’ for 2006. I nevertheless appreciate this collection as a reminder of how fleeting ‘current’ topics of interest turn out to be. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Text —————————– Up With Grups | Adam Sternbergh http://tinyurl.com/g923m He owns eleven pairs of sneakers, hasn’t worn anything but jeans in a year, and won’t shut up about the latest Death Cab for Cutie CD. But he is no kid. He is among the ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap. // I’ll admit that I only read about 1/3 of this article, and it got some play in the blogosphere during a time when there wasn’t much else (it seemed) to talk about; some consensus around it being too focused on the white upper-middle class of New York Beijing’s Unwanted Best Seller | Jürgen Kremb http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,407184,00.html People across China are trying to uncover the name of the mystery author behind the much-discussed best seller “Wolf Totem,” which has sold millions of copies. The tome’s author is a known Chinese dissident who is writing under the nom de plume Jiang Rong. If he had used his real name, the book never would have been published. The oil in your oatmeal | Chad Heeter http://tinyurl.com/mbw7s A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast Costing an Arm and a Leg | Carl Elliott http://www.slate.com/id/2085402/ The victims of a growing mental disorder are obsessed with amputation. Hole-y Cow | Daniel Lew http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=306 Animals can live a surprising amount of time with a permanent hole to their stomach, especially if it is a surgically made fistula. Humans have had fistulas; the first human on record as having one was a French Canadian by the name of Alexis St. Martin. He sustained a life-threatening musket wound in 1822, and was marked a terminal case by his physician. However, he managed to heal and was mostly functional again within two years – except for a hole in his stomach that would never close. Through this hole doctors were able to examine inner workings of his stomach. Pedophilic promo has manga maniacs panting for pre-schooler panties | Ryann Connell http://tinyurl.com/hc6tx It’s gross, filthy and disgusting, but Japanese erotic manga fans can’t get enough of a comic that comes with a pair of pre-school girl’s panties as a promotional item, according to Cyzo (March). More than This : Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation | Samara Allsop http://cinetext.philo.at/magazine/allsop/lostintranslation.html The film’s emphatic climax is the inaudible whisper however it also places emphasis on the fact that the transgression from friend to lover is never fully realised. Perhaps this is what is so appealing to contemporary audiences who are often used to graphic representations of sexual conduct. Celebrity Death Watch | Kurt Andersen http://tinyurl.com/f2jux Could the country’s insane fame fixation maybe, finally – fingers crossed – be coming to an end? One hopeful sign: Paris Hilton. Chamber of horrors http://tinyurl.com/ot4a9 // Santiago Sierra filled a synagogue with carbon monoxide and the viewers toured it wearing gas masks. Gas and Jews, get it? It got shut down for two weeks. Should we care? The Ten Commandments of Simon | Derek Kirk Kim http://www.lowbright.com/Comics/10Commandments/10Commandments.htm // how western males can remain virgins until age 29; online comic Micheal Ignatieff’s speech to University of Ottawa http://www.michaelignatieffmp.ca/speeches/speech0.html // Because he might be Prime Minister within the next five years Malcolm Gladwell has a blog http://gladwell.typepad.com/ Audio —————————– Fighting Terrorism with Schools | Leonard Lopate and Greg Mortenson http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate030706c.mp3 After a failed mountain climbing trip to the summit of K2, Greg Mortenson was nursed back to health by villagers in a remote part of Pakistan. He promised to repay them by returning and building a school. Now, he’s built over 50 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. He describes his mission to fight extremism and terrorism on the Taliban’s home turf in Three Cups of Tea. // Very inspiring. —————–Lectures —————————– Lectures Archive http://www.lecturesarchive.com/index2.html // a collection of links to a variety of lectures in streaming audio and mp3 Slought Foundation http://slought.org // Lectures for the iPod by such notables as Zizek and his would-be canonical companions. As for Zizek, consider this comment from Crooked Timber: “Today I was wondering whether it was worth buying Slavoj Zizek’s new book, The Parallax View and reading it, even in a spirit of ironic detachment or what have you. Reasons to Buy: 1. Some smart people I know like him. Selected Reason Not to Buy: 1. Life’s too short to deal with bullshit, even if it’s high-quality, triple-sifted, quintessence of ironic Lacanian crunchy-frog bullshit like this […] it’s clear to me that it’s not the Mainstream Media that has anything to fear from the blogosphere, but rather Slavoj Zizek-he will shortly be rendered obsolete by the universe of pop-culture enriched slacker grad-student/ABD bloggers. Even Zizek can’t write fast enough to keep up with them all.” —————–Norman Mailer and Son ———————— The Mailers in Discussion Part 1: http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate030206d.mp3 Part 2: http://tinyurl.com/o785x // Part 1: March 2nd afternoon on the Leonard Lopate Show; Part 2: March 2nd evening at some lecture hall. Norman Mailer and his son John Buffalo M. talk about their recent collaborative book and Mailer has great things to say about the state of the USA today. Personally, when Norman Mailer dies I’ll consider it a diminishment of humanity. Video—————————– The Answer | Peter J. Charlton http://tinyurl.com/mrojg // this lends support to my idea that art is meant for the easily impressed, or at the very least that the role of poetry in our lives has been totally taken over by pop lyrics. The Simpsons in Real Life http://youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw // Apparently created in the UK to promote the new season; a month ago famous. Microsoft iPod Video http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2704424 // the importance of good design; a month ago famous. Somewhere it was said that this was actually created by Microsoft in order to critique their design department. South Park Scientology Episode http://youtube.com/watch?v=EJN6PT80ZcA // I think this episode was contrived simply to make fun of Tom Cruise; notable is the illustration of Scientology Doctrine with the overlaid ‘This is what Scientologists Actually Believe’. The question is: what movie did Cruise’s thetan watch 65 million years ago to inspire such feelings for her today? The entire episode used to be at YouTube and is probably still kicking around somewhere. This is the excerpt outlining their beliefs. —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyUrl (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Monday 17 April 2006 @ 3:27 PM
06w05:1 Good Audio Posted January 29th, 2006 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 05 number 1 (good audio) I’ve been listening to my iPod at work for the past month, so I haven’t been able to spend as much time in front of the computer finding good reads. What I present here then is the result of finding good podcasts. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Not Self (Week 1) | Gil Fronsdal 2006-01-16 http://www.audiodharma.org/mp3files/Gil_011606_NotSelf_Wk1.mp3 John Ralston Saul speaking on the Collaspe of Globalism | SBS Radio (Jan 06) http://www9.sbs.com.au/radio/index.php?page=wv&newsID=128346 and on ABC Radio (Aug 05): http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1441983.htm The Leonard Lopate Show: The Wal-Mart Effect 2006-01-23 http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate012306d.mp3 “70 percent of Americans live within a fifteen-minute drive of a Wal-Mart. Charles Fishman looks at how Wal-Mart got so big, and how it’s changing America’s economy, in The Wal-Mart Effect.” Covering 2006-01-20 http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate012006a.mp3 “In Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights, Kenji Yoshino explores the ways in which the law, civil liberties, and self-identification intersect. A Yale Law professor and a gay, Asian-American man, he describes the prejudices that he sees written in America’s civil rights legislation.” Open Phones: Fact or Fiction? 2006-01-19 http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate011906c.mp3 “We’ll take your calls on the recent revelation that James Frey made up some of the incidents he described in his best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces.” Note: Personally I think this whole controversy about this book is a little pointless. Saturday night at my birthday dinner my Mother and Sister got into a discussion about it and I had to pipe up to say, “Imagine if you used all that brain power to think about better things; we’d have a beautiful world’. I mean, the book’s cover alone should be enough to clue you in it’s bullshit: all those tiny little coloured specks on the guy’s hand. Honestly, I always thought it was some book about viruses and illness, and noticed everyone reading it on the subway and train and thinking, ‘why would they want to read something so sad?’ Turns out its about drugs, debauchery, and the cheating ways of a trust fund brat. Perfect book for American society don’t you think? Ah well. At least America’s citizens aren’t paying attention to the war in Iraq. This episode of the Lopate show tried to equate the outrage of the book’s falsity with being lied to by the government, which I found crazy and thus fascinating. Melville: His World and Work 2006-01-18 http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate011806c.mp3 “Herman Melville wrote one of the most important American novels of all time: Moby-Dick. But he wasn’t recognized as a towering literary figure until 40 years after his death. Andrew Delbanco, the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, studies Melville’s life and works in a new biography.” Fast Living 2006-01-12 http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate011206b.mp3 “Renee Price is the curator of the current Egon Schiele exhibit at the Neue Galerie. She revisits the significance of the Viennese artist’s highly-sexualized work, and his very short life.” Animal Insight 2006-01-10 http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate011006c.mp3 “Last year, we interviewed animal scientist Temple Grandin about her latest book: Animals in Translation. In this book, she describes how her autism helps her decode animal behavior. She joins us now with an update on her work, and on new developments in autism research.” This link on autism and it’s relationship to not only the way animals think, but to representative art, reminded me of Nicholas Humphrey’s paper Cave Art, Autism, and the Evolution of the Human Mind: Cave Art, Autism, and the Evolution of the Human Mind | Nicholas Humphrey http://cogprints.org/1744/ “The emergence of cave art in Europe about 30,000 years ago is widely believed to be evidence that by this time human beings had developed sophisticated capacities for symbolization and communication. However, comparison of the cave art with the drawings made by a young autistic girl, Nadia, reveals surprising similarities in content and style. Nadia, despite her graphic skills, was mentally defective and had virtually no language. I argue in the light of this comparison that the existence of the cave art cannot be the proof which it is usually assumed to be that the humans of the Upper Palaeolithic had essentially ‘modern’ minds”. From IT Conversations: Laughter in a Time of War | Tim Zak talking with Zach Warren http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail921.html “In the Fall of 2005, Zach Warren set the World’s Record for running the Philadelphia marathon–while juggling! […] In this second installment in his series on Play, Globeshakers host Tim Zak asks this World Record holder to describe what gives him the inspiration to pursue these feats of extreme endurance. What role does ‘play’ have in the health of the planet? And ultimately, what has he learned about what it takes to re-build an entire country? ‘One of the first casualties of war’ says Zach Warren, ‘is imagination.’ In one of the most war torn regions in the world, the Afghan Mini Mobile Children’s Circus (MMCC) serves as a child protection program to help Afghan children recover from the traumas of war. The MMCC, a Danish-registered NGO, is run by native Afghans. It helps children to be more self-directed in creating their own dreams for the future through theatre and the arts. So, what is the role of the jester in a time of extreme danger? ‘If we’re really serious about building a democracy in this country,’ says Warren ‘then we need to protect their imagination.'” Note: I found the questions asked in this interview to be really boneheaded, but Zach Warren was almost inspiring, making the case rather well that his admitedly silly contributions do in fact make a difference. The Future of Blogging | Joichi Ito http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail725.html “The internet is truly becoming an open network with the rise of amateur content and open source software. In this talk, Joi Ito takes us through the growth of the internet as an open network in layers to the point where the killer app is now user generated content. Earlier, it was the little guys around the edges of the internet who created the open standards which made the web work, and today it is those same people who fuel it with their creativity. He also shares with us his observations of the remix culture seen on the net.Joi notes that it is futile to make any attempts to change user behaviour. It is better to observe it and then make a business out of it. He also talks about how people on the internet do not want to be fed content from a handful of sources – they want to create their own content and have a conversation with others at the same time, and that is the revolution we are witnessing today.” What Do We Know | Robert Trivers http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail787.html “The capacity of humans to deceive each other is well documented by history and personal experience. Less well known, however, is the capacity of most living things to deceive each other – species deceiving other species, members of their own species and themselves. We are, it seems, not that different from parasites, insects and bacteria in this regard.Dr. Robert Trivers talks about the evolutionary basis of deception in this address from Pop!Tech 2005. The first half of this talk focuses on the biological examples of deception in the natural world, with explanations for the evolutionary advantages of deception and self-deception.Later in the talk, Dr. Trivers supplies easily recognizable examples of common human self-deception. He then delves into an overtly political criticism of human deception and self-deception, with an emphasis on current events.”Note: This was really good. I love how he expressed his anger with the Bush Administration. You know something’s worth listening to when it comes from a geek website and has a language warning at the beginning of it. (Because geeks of course never say the word fuck, especially when dealing with Windows software). And speaking of the Bush Administration: State of the Union Address 2006 | James Adomian http://urlx.org/youtube.com/0531 “This year I’m submitting to congress a plan for a 400 billion dollar education plan. Because our children must be literalized. Children that don’t read will not grow up. I’m against hunger. I’m against that. For all our small businesses out there I want to make sure that they have clothings. For every old person out there dreamings, I want to make sure they have the pills to make those dreams happen. For every college student out there, I will make sure that they will be able to take the loans to go to college to be able to pay back those loans with interest. That’s why this year I’m proposing a 400 billion dollar tax cut on our upper income earners.” —————————————-http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com Long urls made short using Url(x) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Sunday 29 January 2006 @ 7:01 PM
06w02:1 Humour from the World's #1 Podcast Posted January 10th, 2006 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 2 number 1 (humour from the world’s #1 podcast) Considering this is the world’s # 1 podcast, listing it here might be a bit redundant, but it’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time, so I just had to share.I began with yesterday’s episode 6 (of a future 12) which had me in tears the three times I listened to it today.The second link is an embedded quicktime from Conan O’Brien last spring, which also had me in stitches when I first saw it a month or two ago.– Timothy ——————————————————————— The Ricky Gervais Show | Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant, Karl Pilkington http://www.guardian.co.uk/rickygervais “Exclusively available online from Guardian Unlimited A further 30 minutes, or thereabouts, of nonsense, courtesy of Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and an increasingly perplexed Karl Pilkington. Listen whenever and wherever you want as these weekly half-hour shows are offered as handy iPod friendly digital files for up to four weeks after they’re first posted.” Spring Cleaning Walker Clip | Late Night with Conan O’Brien http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/1638127/ New Link [2007-04-09] —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 10 January 2006 @ 10:52 PM
