Monthly Archives: May 2002

random Ani fans

I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the random Ani fans who visit my site every day. They are the primary cause of my Klez.E irritation, but they also send me wonderful emails, like this one:

From: Carlos Munoz
…. anyway, came across this quote today and thought you’d like it: “in an age where mass media provide the basis of common experience, ‘Star Wars’ and a handful of other cultural icons may have become a kind of shorthand form of communication”

i’m sure you’ve thought about this, but maybe this quote has some un-congruent edges to your prev thoughts

I can’t help but think back to late nights when Jon and Danny and their friends had entire conversations in Monty Python quotes. Or how many ridiculous conversations emerged out of discussions over terrible 1980s fashion statements – Do you remember jelly shoes and all style Madonna or garbage pail kids or … And yes, the 80s come complete with a survey.
Mass media does wonders for a common language of communication…

ah, sprint..

My 3.5 year commitment to Sprint PCS shows nothing other than my need to have some type of contactable consistency in my life, yet they make it really hard for me to want to stay. For the umpteenth time this month, i called their automated system with my business account (thanks to my “husband” at Trilogy years ago). Of course, this means that i get Claire. I despise Claire. Adamently. With a passion. So, i try to bypass her screaming “Agent” louder and louder and she keeps calmly telling me that i don’t need the agent, that she can help. Grrr. Finally, i start into the queue.
The problem with the queue is that i know, after way too many conversations with media lab sponsors that my position in said queue is dependent on my reputation in their system. So, i spend my n minutes contemplating how they are calculating my position. I’ve been a customer for a long time… but i choose a cheap plan… and i have problems every month… and i always complain when something’s wrong… but i always pay my bill on time…. Finally, a real person answers.
“Umm.. i got my bill today and i received a $50 charge for cancellation. I did not cancel my service and i’m not sure what’s going on…”
Of course, this is met with confusion and the agent goes scampering off to try to figure out what is happening. As she does this, i start considering all of the reasons why this might have occurred and i remember that i spent over half of last month on the phone with SprintPCS because they stopped giving me access to the website services. Apparently, my archaic account didn’t transition well so when they updated the site, my account was broken and i couldn’t log in. Sure enough, this was the root of all problems. To fix it, they cancelled my account and gave me a new account. Since my old account was to expire in September, they charged me for 5 months of recinding on my contract. Ok, the agent fixed that. To top it off, they created a new service for me, to expire next April. This means that my contract is not up in September, but continues. And if i cancel in September, i’m out a bunch of money. No no no no. No thank you, i’m not interested. Well, she can’t fix that.. she can only make a note and hope that in September, the agent takes note of this. Grrrr… Very silly phone service.

my morning news

the nice part about going offline for more than 4 hours at a time is that there is a lot more to read…
this morning i got to read more of Lawrence Lessig’s thoughts on how the Internet is going to be controlled by a small elite. i agree with his idealism, but i can’t see how the internet is any different than anything else in our globalized world – the powerful just keep getting more powerful and the internet is just another sign.
so, apparently MIT is starting to filter email to stop the KLEZ.E worm. now, i’m definitely an avid hater of this worm (and i’ve been getting 40+ messages with it per day and it was the cause of my latest email switch), but i can’t say that i’m thrilled that my mail is being filtered at a higher level. i really believe that some mail systems should filter (and i would like to get my mother on one of those systems), but i want the choice. i want to be given the option between “unfiltered mail server” and “filtered mail server.” as someone who knows how to deal with viruses on my end, i want to see all of them and filter for myself; that’s why i don’t /dev/null any messages – just bounce and copy a version for me to see what’s up. if you aren’t as savvy with email, join a mail server that filters for you. somehow, i just think it’s a bad sign that MIT is not giving us that choice, MIT of all places.
i still feel really badly for bill maher. his show is called politically incorrect and yet he is still being punished for making a rather poignant sarcastic remark because it was utterly politically incorrect. ::sigh:: that is never a good sign for those of us who want to criticize what is going on. but this returns to the power problem: you have to have power to have a voice and in order to get power, your voice must be inline with all of the other powerful voices.
gone are the days when you have to worry about showing up dead due to database errors; now, you can simply be wrongly presumed a terrorist. oh, how i love this database nation.
apparently, my roommate is having a lot more fun with random strangers on the ‘net (and even jesus related). oh, speaking of which, we passed by the jesus house yesterday and our religious christmas tree offerings are still adorning the outside tree! how exciting!

how gay are you?

i have to admit that silly surveys are one of the best ways to procrastinate during untolerable meetings:


How Gay Are YOU? [?]

actually, i’m outright addicted to surveys and questionnaires. i hated them as a kid; well, i hated those dumb school ones. but psychological surveys, questionnaires about my behavior – oh i love those. i fill out usually at least 1-2 a day, sometimes for money, sometimes for fun. on one hand, i want to see how they rate me; on the other, i want to understand the mentality behind the surveyors. my latest favorite:

more bad politics

Why is my lab so disfunctional? Every time that i get the bright idea to pay attention to the politics at my lab, i come out angry and frustrated. And while i really really really want to rant, i know that this is far too public of a forum to allow me to do so. So, just imagine me, ready to explode and rant and rave and otherwise want to strangle everyone and everything.

i learned it on the Internet…

Lacking a bias-free source of information, people turn to the Internet. For the most part, every opinion can be found there, and every possible “truth.” Yet, that’s the scary part – not everything online is remotely true; the Internet is a feed to both the most reputable academic research and the digital Enquirer. Yet, as one oped writer noticed, the populus doesn’t have the critical awareness to separate fact from fiction online. We are building a worldwide community of hatred through our supposed “unbiased” media. Fabulous.

Continue reading →

valid uses of stereotyping

Given the controversy over race-based medical profiling, i can’t help but wonder when it’s good or bad to use stereotyping, both in medicine and beyond. Could you imagine a doctor that didn’t ask if you were a (fe)male? Could i imagine having a colonoscopy for equality’s sake? Hmm… On the other hand, the joke at MIT is that the doctors will always ask if you are pregnant – i wonder if they ask the boys that…
I guess i really don’t have a problem with being treated differently for having different body parts, or for fitting into different risk categories. At my age, they have a list of possible failures that they look for. Based on my historical health, my sex, my family’s previous health, my age, etc… they create a list of stereotypes that they check for when dealing with my health. That seems reasonable, even if i despise the medical industry. Why not race?
The problem that i see is not whether or not they use stereotypes to give me better quality services given good statistics; the problem occurs when i am treated unequally or not given services or charged more or not given insurance or … Stereotypes are not inherently evil; it is their uses that we must evaluate.

[cypherpunk login for nytimes: c1ph3rpunk/c1ph3rpunk]

author of “The Lonely Crowd” died

David Riesman, author of the controversial academic/pop culture book The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, passed away. It’s an intriguing book, written in the 1950’s, at the heart of the suburban American ‘togetherness’, developing a labeling system for talking about the different types of neighbors and community relationships…. Fun sociology critiques of the American dream (and American neuroses). Given all of Putnam‘s critiques that seem to long for the 1950’s, i wonder if American culture was ever truly functional… ha!

socializing envy…

one of the major problems with holing myself up to do work is that i get socializing envy. this is particularly true because everyone emails everyone about socializing events. thus, even in my inability to participate, i see the participation happening and i see the fun that people had in the post-party message post. plus, right now is the season of pre-party planning. how absurd is that? we are already planning for a party that doesn’t happen until the end of August. given, it’s burning man and it requires an obsessive amount of planning. and since we are thousands of miles away and have no money, it just requires coordination. but it’s sooo sad to hear bostonburn folks plan and know that i can’t participate in the planning for another month or so. ::sigh::
more and more i realize that socializing is just fundamentally who i am. i like being out with people, engaging and being silly, seeing how minds work, not just reading about them, learning about what it means to live life just to live. i hate being too far removed from reality – it just feels gross.
on the other hand, these days i feel like the ultimate genuine geek; i could bite the head off of anything in matters of seconds – i’m just too schitzed out. on that note, back to my non-reality work tornado of chaos. i feel like a brick being thrown continuously against a wall. it’s probably a good thing that i’m not seeing people these days – better to avoid when you know that you can’t bring any positive energy to an interaction.