Dave Kellam

I present you with two articles on internet porn, the first is Not Tonight honey, I’m logging on and The Porn Myth. They’re both essentially the same article, taking a look at internet porn and how it effects real-life relationships. This bit in the porn myth article made me laugh:

By the new millennium, a vagina—which, by the way, used to have a pretty high “exchange value,” as Marxist economists would say—wasn’t enough; it barely registered on the thrill scale.

I think the laughter was mainly due to some bizarre mental image of stock brokers actively trading them on an open market. Think: crazy pit full of traders with their little vests on, screaming about vaginas.

As far as Internet porn goes, I can see how it could become a problem for someone. Internet porn is fast and easy to get ahold of, but I have trouble seeing how it could replace another living, breathing and warm human bean. Then again, I’ve borne witness to geeky compsci classes full of reclusive nerds.

However, I don’t think porn is entirely responsible for the changing cultural attitudes towards women. It isn’t so much that porn is everywhere now, it’s that sex is everywhere. Magazines, movies, whatever — it’s not just porn that’s promoting having giant tits and flawless ass, all of the models and stars we see ooze sex. I think the porn star image and being unable to get off without it is a product of media as whole rather than just internet porn.

There’s a Panther up at the New York Times. My favourite part of the article is the starting:

Hackers and academics have uncovered one Windows security hole after another, turning Microsoft into a frantic little Dutch boy at the dike without enough fingers. If the computer industry were a celebrity, it would hire an image consultant.

That and there’s a comment around the end that basically says when you’re using Apple’s os, it feels like you own the computer and what you’re doing, rather than feeling like you’re borrowing someone elses computer with Mrs. Microsoft leaning over your shoulder telling you what you can and can’t do.

My house is old, it’s a piece of shit. There’s a random chimney that runs though a corner of my room. The squirrels have discovered that they can climb down the chimney and live amongst the walls or ceilings or wherever in my room. There’s this persistent fucker of a squirrel gnawing or scratching at something in the wall beside me. I’m trying to get some work done and this guy just doesn’t understand that bashing my fist on the wall means go away.

A mathematician at the Waterloo was kind of bored and decided to do a pocket change analysis. I guess Canada isn’t too bad, despite having such big coins.

The average Canadian transaction generates 5.9 coins in change. The best way to lower that average, to 4.578, he found, would be for Canada to adopt an 83-cent coin.

He found that the US should have an 18 cent coin and that more than $10 billion sits around in jars and drawers in people’s homes. And the math isn’t really that hard, just linear systems. Although, he did show the problem (like putting stamps on an envelope) to be NP hard.

Pamela Anderson is calling for a boycott of KFC because they harm their chickens or treat then poorly or something. Yup, my guess is that they kill them, that’s poor treatment alright. Oh right, they might suffer, because chickens have a brain larger than the bits of grain they eat. And I bet that lion in the corner is sitting there pondering how to kill you ethically. Don’t worry, it already decided it was going to eat you, it just doesn’t want you to suffer.

And Freeman has a website, w00t!

So, I had a newspaper to run and then an essay/presentaiton to do and then a threaded webserver to write/modify and I slept for about six hours out of sixty-five. That was fun.

You know what else is fun? iTunes for Windows… now all you people who don’t have macs can use a great piece of music management software (although WinAmp is still a pretty sweet ass player). The iTunes store still isn’t available in Canada though.

Now, go read the paper.