Saturday, May 01, 2004
Search Engine Solves Mystery
COUNCIL BLUFFS -- Tonight, on his way home, Justin (24) thought of looking up an artist he and several of his friends at the seminary had marveled at one night over wisely-held bottles of beer.
But he had forgotten the artist's name.
He knew it would likely appear as a surreal artist, so when he awoke his sleeping computer and went to a search engine, he typed "surreal artists." As a first stab he thought he would try to find a page with links to different surreal artists, and then look upon said page for a link that would point him in the right direction. Then he remembered what little he knows about art history, and that Surrealism is too broad a category to find the particular artist he was looking for. "I need a more specific search string," he said to himself. "Were there any particular characteristics I could include in my search for the artist?"
This artist indeed had a distinct style, and after pondering it for a moment Justin came up with a winning string: "surreal painting meat".
After a couple red herrings, he found (almost) just what he was looking for--not the page itself, but the page that led to the page. The final destination? The art and paintings of Mark Ryden. Justin could now rest easy, knowing that he had put to rest his long-held angst over promptly forgetting the painter's name after the night of wisely-held beer.
So what's the art itself like? Check it out yourself. Think what would happen if Bosch, one of my absolute favorite painters, had been stuck painting books for children. I mean, I had luck finding the guy with the search string "surreal painting meat". You do the creepy math.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Large feet
Today I calculated my ecological footprint.
My scores indicate how much resources I use for each category, in acres (hectares): Food: 4.2 (1.7) Mobility: .5 (.3) Shelter: 6.7 (2.7) Goods/Services: 4.9 (2.7)
Basically, if everyone lived like me, we'd need 3.7 planets.
Here I thought I was doing pretty good, but I've posted my results in hectares so you can compare them to Andrea's--seems like I'm way over the average for Germany, which she says is 4.7 hectares.
Food is a killer. Pretty much, if you want to eat "animal based products" frequently, it means you consume a lot of resources. This is unfortunate, as "animal based products" includes beef, pork, chicken, fish, eggs, and dairy products, and these are, I think, pretty important parts of my diet. It also doesn't help that I live in a free-standing house, but, honestly, I live with my parents, who live in a church parsonage; it's a part of my father's salary package. We are very good about conserving energy, but it goes to show you can't live in a house at all without eating a ton of resources.
We also do our best to recycle, but like the fellow over at rightee, my area is only half friendly towards recyclers--we actually can't recycle paper here at all. The test doesn't ask at all whether you recycle--only how much trash you generate. I wonder why not--though, you know, at times recycling takes as much energy and resources as generating new product. That's where we need to do some serious rethinking--even our conscious steps to help the environment cause problems.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
"Get on the tracks...the SEX tracks"
Who needs online dating services when we have Toothing?
It won't be long before everyone knows what Toothing is. For the uninitiated, though, there's a nice FAQ available to answer all your questions.
Sounds like a scene from a movie. He's on the tube to work in London, dressed nicely in his suit and fancy shoes, when his Bluetooth-equipped cell vibrates in his pocket. He pulls it out and notices he has a text message. A thrill shoots through his body as he reads the message: "Toothing?" He looks around the car for others with cell phones--which one could it be? No, not the old woman who's shouting into her phone; no, not that fat gal in the floral house dress at the front of the car; certainly not that woman with the gigantic nose; definitely not that tall, geeky fellow with the briefcase. Then he sees her: the hot blonde in the dress that shows her ample cleavage and long, long legs. She's seen him first, must have been watching him check his text message; she holds up her phone, and beckons him to her with a slender, red-nailed finger, the tip of her tongue curled to touch her front teeth suggestively. As he crosses the car to her, she stands, casts her phone aside, grabs his tie, and leads him into the bathroom. The fat gal in the print dress, the old woman, the big-nosed young lady, and the tall geek all watch enviously as the bathroom door clicks locked....
Maybe toothing is like this for some people. But my skepticism makes me think more along the lines of the folks who ask, what about fat and ugly people? My guess, like the second message on this thread, is that the majority of people who are going to hear about toothing and buy a new phone just so they can try it out are going to be sweaty male pervs who imagine they're going to hook up with a foxy lady. As toothing takes off, women are going to become hot commodities; they'll show up at the train station and get 15 messages from randy fellows who have been dreaming for a quick shag. If toothing was ever a simple diversion for hot skanks and sexy studs, its publicity will be the end of that.
This wretched thread with "Kenneth" already shows this--"GingerJames" thinks the moderators should do something with this perv, because, as "GingerJames" says, "I'm not sure he's providing the sort of image we want 'Toothing to have." What kind of image, exactly, does he expect people to get when they find out he posts on a bbs to arrange clandestine meetings to have sex with total strangers in a cramped airplane toilet stall?
There's plenty on the toothing sites about how to tooth "safely," chief among these to make sure you're always using protection. From the way it looks to me, though, there's no safety involved in this. Sure, sounds like there's some pure, horny fun to be had--but don't come crying to me when people start getting gutted like fish and left to die in downtown bars.
At least they'll be able to phone for help.
Monday, April 26, 2004
Know the place you live
There was a post on Mamamusings that lets you create a map of the places you've visited. You can do the same at My World66
So here's my map of the countries I've visited in the world:
5 countries, for 2% of the world. As a person who likes to travel, that really makes me feel I have some catching up to do.
But then I think..."Hey, it's not like I've never been anywhere." It's easy for us Americans to look at all the other places in the world and think, "Man, I've been to hardly any foreign countries--I've never traveled at all." But then, our sense of space is different. I've traveled all over the United States--here's the map for that:
You can tell I'm missing some of my corners, but I've pretty much been everywhere else. I'm sort of amazed to look at it that way; it makes me realize that, yes, I have indeed been traveling, and it reminds me that the United States, while not the biggest country in the world, is still pretty darn big. I figure last summer (yes, quite literally, just in the four months of summer) I drove over 10,000 miles around the Midwest, South, and East portions of the States. To drive the same amount in Europe, I could start in Lisbon, Portugal, and drive all the way to Russia.
When in Ireland, I was surprised to learn that it took only four some hours to drive across the country; that was less than it took me to drive home from college. I also had the chance to do some traveling over there, to use Ireland as my hub for European exploration, but time--and money--prohibited me from doing so. The more I got to know Ireland, the more I learned the value of knowing the place you live, and knowing it well.
Besides, a long time ago I had a friend who was horribly dumb, but whose world map would look like my state map. She taught me that more travel is not directly proportional to one's intelligence or wisdom--and, honestly, I'd rather have the latter two than a filled passport.
