Religious fundamentalists in Indonesia have succeeded in getting an artist and his models arrested, even before they’ve gotten their desired anti-porn bill passed into law. Religious fundamentalists here already use "pornography" and "obscenity" interchangeably, implying that porn is not constitutionally protected. I’m interested to note that virtually all the coverage I’ve seen of this issue is from the Australian press, even though the pressure in Indonesia is from the same factions that are so upset about those cartoons.

For no particular reason, here’s some Mark Twain for your reading pleasure, courtesy of Project Gutenberg (bless ’em!).

MY WATCH–[Written about 1870.]

AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE

Continue reading →

Via Lifehacker, the 4INFO Mobile Search service gives us yet another way to waste time (and money, for those of us who have to pay for messaging) with our cellphones. Want to know what the weather’s like where you are (may be limited to US locations)? Text “w [zip or city]” to 44636 and get back current conditions and forecast. The most useful other services I saw were airline flight and FedEx/UPS tracking. You can also set up alerts at their web site.

At least the tards got reassigned (fired would have been better, but they are government jobs, after all) in this story of raid caps gone to the head.

They’re really controversy-averse, but if you can find something that couldn’t possibly offend anyone, or infringe on anybody’s publicity rights (among lots of other restrictions), you could get it printed on M&Ms.

An item from the FDA announcing more stringent requirements for foods being labeled “whole grain” explains why so many foods were whole grain for a while there, since it was good for you and did not yet have a legal meaning. Back to eating oat hulls and wheat chaff for breakfast, I guess.

In a disgusting display of appalling hypocrisy, the US Congress is beating up US high-tech firms for complying (perhaps even coöperating) with the Chinese government in its attempt to gain all the advantages of modern technology without granting its people any of the concomitant freedom. Any of Washington’s Congressthings—or any who voted to give China Most Favored Nation (I of course mean "Normal") trading status—who climb on this bandwagon deserve some serious Lady MacBeth-grade bad dreams.
Partial disclosure: I am not entirely clean on this issue; I worked for several years at a large aerospace company in Washington, and while that company’s lobbying on behalf of China always irritated me, it was no more than a tertiary reason for my leaving.

Second Hand Songs has a list of cover songs that are interestingly searchable.

The Craigslist Craig addressed the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Lots of good stuff in there, if you have the time to read it. I’ll be interested to see whether the effort at collaborative filtering to which he refers fares any better than the countless others. (ThirdVoice may not have been collaborative filtering, strictly speaking, but it was an idea I had also had, and would have needed something like collaborative filtering in order to be useful)
Or maybe what I want isn’t really collaborative filtering so much as delegated filtering, or maybe it’s the same thing, and it all gets into trust networks, I imagine.

For less than their price for pre-populated cookies, Tsue Chong of 801 S. King St. Seattle will place your fortunes (provided to them on 2½"x½" paper) in their cookies. It’s $5.50 per pound of cookies stuffed with your fortunes, $8.50 stuffed with theirs. A pound is about 60 cookies.