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.

It’s turkey day in Canada, so I’ll be eating some turkey and stuffing later on in the day. I’m also at home, which means I don’t have the typical amount of computer access that I normally have. I haven’t really done all that much, it’s nice to relax for a bit without the overhead of school. I want to see Kill Bill, thought about going up to Ottawa last night but realized I’ll be back in Kingston soon enough (although I probably wont be able to see it at the good theatre).

Why is this picture making me laugh so much? It’s their official link graphic too. It has the big kiddie letters and everything. It would probably be more entertaining if the blog was actually written by Bush. Whee, that one’s gonna happen. Can you imagine the president saying/writing what he’s thinking rather than what’s dictated as policy? It would end up kind of like, “Wheeeeee, this chair spins good. Weeeeee.” Then there’d be a bit more, “Wheeee.” Followed by his late-night caffeine infused, “Wheeeeeees”.

Write a post claiming how infrequently you post and do your best to continue the trend. Last weekend was homecoming, when a lot of alumni come back, get drunk and generally act like assholes. It’s a lot of drunken debauchery and gives people a chance to start drinking by noon (technically you can any day, just so you know). I woke up sick on Sunday morning, not from drinking but from hanging out with filthy human beans. Then, I had to go edit the paper. Editing a funny paper when you’re sick isn’t so much fun. Add in the fact that Clark decided to fill the boardroom with forty kegs and fifty cases of beer, so Alex and I didn’t have our own room to edit in. I survived.

Monday was my birthday, also not all the exciting due to sickness. The essay/presentation due for Tuesday didn’t help either. I went down to the Scherzo later on for a couple birthday pints, Dave was bar-tending and it was the DJ collective night. The music is usually pretty chill, and there aren’t that many people. You can play cards or chess or backgammon or whatever, it’s fun. Alanah gave me some stuff for being sick, some Glenfiddich and a copy of The Baghdad Blog. That’s about it for now, I have another Algorithms test tomorrow, I need to do some more studying for it. I have a meeting to goto as well.

I seem to have a lot of work to do for the classes I’m taking. I think it’s mainly due to the lack of exams this term and higher quota of essays & tests. The paper keeps me busy too. It just means that the website had been forgotten about. I have remembered though. Fuck, I finally posted something the other day and didn’t even check to see if it went through properly. I should be able to do a better job than that. I still make time for entertainment though; two new shows that I’ve been watching are Carnivale and Joe Schmo, one is HBO, the other Spike. I’m liking Carnivale, it’s building up well. Joe Schmo can be painful to watch but it’s entertaining.

Champion horse missing balls: “When horses are on display they often retract their testicles. You cannot see them, and judges are not at liberty to start groping horses’ balls.”

Gah, test and essays and assignments already. It feels like I haven’t really stopped since school started a couple of weeks ago. I think half of it has to do with the newspaper turning Sunday into a nonexistent day and Monday into a late and tired one. It seems like the week is short and my time just disappears.

My parents came up on the weekend; we had some breakfast and did a bit of shopping. I picked up a bookcase for my room and ended up getting a birthday present a little bit early. My new toy is a Palm Zire 71, i’m liking it. The screen is beautiful, really nice to look at. I think that I’ll probably end up reading more books; ebooks aren’t all that hard to find and it’s pretty easy to pull out the palm and start reading.

Here are a few random links that won’t go on the sidebar: Man arrested with snakes down pants, Frank Black tries to prove himself on his own message board, Copyright and Fairuse and Fighting the Fevers (here’s an excerpt): “This encounter between the world’s richest man and some of the world’s poorest prostitutes is part of Mr. Gates’s new passion: doing to AIDS and malaria what he did to Netscape”.