Journal entries in 'Random Crap I Found On The Internet' for April, 2005

A few months ago I read this essay written by Orson Scott Card on his thoughts about gay marriage. It was such a disappointment to discover that a writer I like so much holds such an intolerant, narrow-minded opinion.

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SeaCode is a startup whose plan is to buy a $10 million cruise ship, park it three miles off the coast of California (just barely in international waters), and fill it with software developers hired in places like India. By registering them as "seamen," they fall under international law, and US laws like having to pay payroll taxes and requiring immigration visas don't apply. They will work 8-10 hour shifts, 24 hours a day. "Try to get American software engineers to work at night," says Cook. (heh.)

I realize that legally, there's nothing to be done to stop this kind of thing. But I just don't understand how such obvious attempts to skirt the law can be accepted idly. I kind of miss the days when mob justice took care of things when the law couldn't.

(Poetic justice now dictates that my end will one day come at the hands of a frantic mob in a style fit for The Onion's horoscopes.)

I read the other day about how Nine Inch Nails is giving away a multitrack audio file of their latest single online. It's in Apple GarageBand format, so anyone with a Mac can open it up and do whatever they want with it.

...Drag the file over to your hard disk and double click it. Hit the space bar. Listen. Change the tempo. Add new loops. Chop up the vocals. Turn me into a woman. Replay the guitar. Anything you'd like.

...I've now heard a country version of the track as well as an abstract Latin interpretation (thanks, Leo). There are some copyright issues involved, so read the notice that pops up. Giving this away is an experiment. I'm interested to see what comes of it, what issues are raised and what the results are.

--Trent Reznor

I think that's cool as hell, and I wish more bands would do that. Of course, with all the fear that record companies have these days about MP3s, I can imagine how they cringe at the thought of giving away a multitrack recording.

Prof. Naomi S. Baron will soon publish an article titled See You Online: Gender Issues in College Student Use of Instant Messaging. A highlight:

For example, women tend to use more affective markers (e.g., “I know how you feel”), more diminutives (e.g., “little bitty insect”), more hedge words (e.g., perhaps, sort of), more politeness markers (e.g., “I hate to bother you”), and more tag questions (e.g., “We’re leaving at 8:00 pm, aren’t we?”) than do men. Men, on the other hand, are likely to use more referential language (e.g., “The stock market took a nosedive today”), more profanity, and fewer first person pronouns than are women.

The description of female writing style sounds very familiar to me. I don’t say “little bitty insect” (thank god), but the “affective markers,” hedge words, excessive use of first person pronouns, and relative politeness are right on the money. Maybe that explains why twice now I've had online gay friends profess their interest in me.

I've been trying to think of some cool project I can build with my Lego Mindstorms set. JP Brown's site details some cool Mindstorms robots he's made, such as CubeSolver, which solves Rubik's Cubes, Aegis, an auto-tracking squirrel-hunting cannon, and K9, a camera-enabled robotic dog that plays fetch.

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