i love getting academic compliments… four of us crazy grad students from 3 different institutions decided to put together a workshop proposal for CSCW 2002 and it was accepted!!! what’s even better is that this is a high compliment since we are all students and normally workshops are done but “established” people… so, we’re now starting the call for participants – how crazy? a bunch of folks gathered to talk about identity & privacy in order to focus on empowering users!
Yearly Archives: 2002
social networks
it’s so great to see social networks become more and more discussed, particularly as i’ve been playing with them so much lately. the latest is a great orielly jon udell post about visualizing social networks and other social behaviors.
preparing for burning man
Ok.. i shouldn’t already be getting anxious about Burning Man, but i really can’t help it… For starters, Becky is in the process of buying a vehicle to get us across country. Unless a miracle happens today at the police-confiscated vehicle auction, we will be driving across in a big red van, and i do mean big. Now, although Becky thinks that this thing should be monochromatic, i know her well enough to know that she doesn’t really know what that word means. I mean, c’mon – her wardrobe is 1000 colors plus, so i’m hoping and praying that maybe we can make it into a nice little art car. Or better yet, an art car for the playa! As if that wasn’t enough, i’ve been tracking down fun places to visit on our trip across country. After Ming’s adventure, i’m just dying to go to the Crayola Crayon Factory, but i seemed to have found the home of kitsch located centrally in Chicago – a surplus warehouse of random kitsch toys and crap!! How great would it be to have that shit on the playa!?!?!
Now, if only our country doesn’t pass a resolution to invade the Netherlands….
documentary leads to arrest
One of my favorite parts of errol morris’ the thin blue line is that it lead to the uncovering of an innocent victim. The documentary was used to make people reconsider a legal case, eventually releasing from prison an innocent man. This case reminds me of the power of documentaries, in telling stories and creating social change. This is the same attitude that Cambridge Documentary Films has when it creates movies like Rape Is… to change the social attitude towards rape as a systematic tactic of power. Hell, this is the attitude that many documentarians have – tell real stories to make people reconsider social assumptions.
And then sometimes, the law gets involved… Apparently, HBO decided to air a documentary on a man who shared the drug ecstasy with his children. Horrified, it seems as though the police got involved and the man has been arrested for endangering his children (and not surprisingly, his ex-wife backed him). There’s something quite problematic to me about HBO doing a special that puts someone at risk with the law. Sure, what this man did might be illegal or problematic, but it was the documentary that got the police involved (not the testimony of the ex-wife who knew beforehand). I’d love to think that the documentarians were serving justice, but with the war on drugs the way it is, their actions are just propagating a truly fubared institution. I can’t help but wonder what the results of reality TV shows are – is everyone arrested for admitting their drug use, their illegal sex acts, their speeding? If someone comes out on TV and oral sex is illegal in their state, can they be arrested? Are they persecuting themselves? This seems like a very slippery slope…
[Afternote: a good friend of mine ran into similar problems when he was working at a newspaper… apparently, their paper got someone into trouble with the INS…]
creativity mandated…
i remember first hearing about the “be creative or die” research in response to a lot of stuff in japan, and then again when i came across the research on why gays are the best predictors of good cities to live in (and how gays & techies are a lot alike… tehehe). i’m always humored reading this kind of stuff, because it’s just predictive metrics, making a slice through two dimensions in habits to show commonalities… but it’s the same stuff that got the bell curve folks into a heap of trouble. statistics are just great – they show lots of fun things, and almost always those fun things are 100% accurate for what they’re showing… and then they get used to extrapolate and that’s when we all get into a bit of trouble…
Letting Web Users Fib Scientifically Is Key
ultrasound offices
i went to get a bunch of ultrasounds today (lots more yummy cysts – oh what fun! they still don’t know what is wrong…) so i’m sitting in the waiting room, with my cold and my bloated wisdom teeth removed face, looking like that’s the last place i want to be, surrounded by cherub-like pregnant women in khakis, exuberant about the idea that they will get to see their babies. and of course they’re glaring at me so all i want to scream is “don’t worry – i’m not pregnant and probably never will be” as i glare back.
ultrasound rooms are odd because everyone has this expectation about why you are there and they make all of these judgments if they think you are unfit to be there for that purpose. hrmfpt. next time i must wear my leather jacket or adorn a sign “my unborn will beat up your unborn”
the pu**y monologues
you know something has reached mainstream when various publications can poke fun of it without referencing it directly… as time goes on, i see more and more stuff related to the vagina monologues and that just makes me happy. so, today’s version was a nerve commentary on the pu**y monologues.
in other vagina news, i got the most fabulous email from a transwoman who wrote to say how amazing it was for her to be in TVM because it was her first experience at female bonding, and really understanding who she was. her note sooo brought me to tears. yesterday was her surgery so i keep hoping that all went well.
in related-parts news, i just read a great little poem in response to John Ashcroft’s decision to purchase $8,000 drapes to cover the bare-breasted statue behind his podium in the hall of justice.
groaning…
getting one’s wisdom teeth removed takes a lot more than i would have thought. sadly, i continue to be completely delerious. perkaset included, i’ve been very ill, nautious and dizzy. it’s a terrible terrible feeling. plus i look like a chipmunk, can’t think or see straight and am otherwise dreading the days. at least i’ve seen 1/2 of 4 mostly-terrible movies….. original sin (mm… angelina), live nude girls, virtual sexuality, waiting for guffman– and 1/2 of one really good one – american beauty (’cause dan had never seen it and bless him, he came and dealt with my drugged self)
hoping to recover soon… don’t like this one bit.
