depaderico

Senators Clinton & Obama, how would you regulate the harvesting and retention of personal information by social networking sites?

 Politics  Comments Off
Feb 272008
 

There seems to be a lot of interest in certain issues revolving around facebook and myspace. Some of them strike me as naive, such as the claims that anyone can see all your data, since you can limit people who can see your profile to just your friends. That, and you have choice over what goes up. The only exception is when you’re tagged or receive a wall-post — there’s a delay between when that happens and when you might get around to untagging yourself or deleting the post.

The more substantial issue is that it’s very hard to delete your facebook profile and nearly impossible to do permanently. On the group, “How to permanently delete your facebook account”, they recommend first deleting everything and then contacting facebook and requesting account removal. Of course, you can deactivate your account, but this is apparently not a preferred option. It’s not clear to me from any of this whether deactivation is dispreferred because (a) while no one can still see your data, it still exists on facebook, which is unsettling, or (b) deactivation doesn’t work as one would think, and some data are still viewable to other users.

I don’t see why no one has explored what is to me the obvious way of getting your account deleted: posting a lot of pornographic or hateful material. I’ve never encountered any on facebook, and so I assume that watchdogs exist, perhaps based on user complaints. I guess not everyone would want their account associated with hardcore pornography and racist treatises, however briefly, but it would no doubt be fun.

 Posted by depaderico at 7:39 pm  Tagged with:

A brief commentary on the various phalli in the movie Elf

 Cynical Cinema  Comments Off
Dec 312007
 

I watched Elf, the Will Ferrel movie, a couple times over the holidays. I’d seen it before, but for some reason hadn’t remembered it being as good as I found it during this recent holiday season. A few things came to mind. Note in the following commentary that I’m neither religious nor especially well-read, so I apologize in advance if I sound glaringly uninformed.

mmm syrup

Although the ending feels forced and contrived, I thought this was a very entertaining movie. Will Ferrel is a tall guy, so his Buddy the Elf is not only a giant among elves but bigger than most humans. While at first take he appears to suffer from schizophrenia, after a couple minutes it becomes clear to any sympathetic interlocutor that he’s more or less in charge of all his mental facilities, due to his force of personality and readiness to defend his position. He debates both a coworker and a boss on what it’s like in the north pole and on how natural it is to sing (especially in the north pole). Anyone with a hermeneutic of generosity for Buddy the Elf realizes that he’s not crazy, but inspired.

It occurred to me that the whole movie might be interpreted as a Christian allegory, and I wondered whether this is accidental or intentional. Replace “on the naughty list” with “going to hell at the present rate”, “belief in Santa Claus” with “belief in Christ”, and “Christmas gifts” with “divine gifts”, and the rest works itself out. Faith is discussed explicitly, and some of the main rules of religion–no salvation without faith–are affirmed. Singing isn’t something you do in the north pole, it’s something you do in church. The father, meanwhile, undergoes repentence, finding himself eventually back on Santa’s nice list. How very American: good, clean humor that’s pseudo-explicitly religious.

Another thing I picked up on, whether or not intended by the filmmakers, is that Buddy the Elf seems to be based on Dostoyevsky’s Mishkin in The Idiot. Mishkin, having spent several years in Norway with a doctor who was treating his epilepsy, goes to Russia to make contact with his remaining family. Everyone is taken by his apparent simplicity, but it becomes evident that he is capable of great depth of thought and action. Also, he gets along well with children and falls in love with a mean woman. Here the resemblance ends, as Buddy’s relationship with his family strengthens and improves throughout the film, while Mishkin’s family distanced themselves from him. Also, Buddy eventually managed to score with his girlfriend and turn her good, whereas Mishkin failed at this. Interestingly, Mishkin, according to whatever literary authorities, is Christ, so since Buddy is based on Mishkin…

Next time: commentary on the phallus represented by the whale that sees off Buddy on his journey out of the north pole.

 Posted by depaderico at 7:43 pm

Glow-in-the-dark = what?

 Humorous  Comments Off
Dec 102007
 

How does glow-in-the-dark work? I was curious to know, so I went to the wikipedia page for glow-in-the-dark, which links to the article on phosphorescence. In short, it’s very dense and hard to read. Something compelled me to look at the talk page, where there were some interesting posts, which I felt illustrated the commitment people feel toward wikipedia, and the sometimes competing viewpoints that motivate its contributors.

The “science guy” says this:

When addressing Lupin’s suggestions, please do not lose the technical details that currently exist. Phosphorescence is a very specific type of luminescence, and as such should not simply restate that definition. It may be necessary to add a simplified introduction, or perhaps add some diagrams to indicate what is meant by singlet/triplet and dipole allowed/disallowed transitions. But as this is the heart of the physics, I strongly urge that it not be simply omitted.

What did Lupin suggest?

Could someone please either explain in layman’s terms or omit

* quantum mechanically forbidden
* state singlet and state triplet
* spin multiplicity
* kinetically slow

Thanks! This introductory paragraph is very off-putting to non-experts as it stands

Someone later said the following, which I find very amusing:

This article is not “better” than an encyclopedic article by many measures that I can think of. There are many reasons one would want to come to an article on this subject — the current treatment should be restricted to a “how it works” section, with the larger article being about, say, the position of phosphorescence in culture and history, its replacement of radium paint, lists of materials, and its practical and decorative uses. I mean, for crying out loud, “Glow in the dark” redirects here. This article is like an ambush. It reminded me of the essay generator at (http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo). It’s readable if you try, but even if you do so you will have learned nothing.

So how does that weird greenish shit that absorbs light, and then emits it, work? I’m sorry, traveler, but you’re more or less fucked, as it appears that science nerds more or less have a monopoly on its wikipedia article.

 Posted by depaderico at 9:53 pm
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