Listics

From the University of Wisconsin Daily Cardinal…

UW-Madison’s new policy of contacting parents of students intoxicated in
life-threatening drinking situations has already resulted in 22 phone calls home

this semester.

According to UW-Madison Dean of Students Lori Berquam, all
but one of these incidents involved students who had been sent to detoxification
for binge drinking.

Housing officials informed incoming students of the
new parental involvement policy [before the school year began.]

According to Berquam, "80 to 85 percent are freshman and the
remaining are sophomores."

After an incident takes place, parents are
usually called while the student is present.

Tiered… ethernet

Weird… etherbunny

RB, reminded of the old Wired Magazine feature "Wired versus Tired,"  proposed a new approach:  "Weird versus Tiered."  Here’s my first stab at it…  more agile minds will undoubtedly find funnier pairings.  As for me, I am old and slow, my head hurts, my feet stink, and I don’t love Jesus…  that’s my excuse…

Weird                           Tiered
cladistics                       Linnaen taxonomy
orgone therapy               org charts
sacher-masoch              maslow
demolition derby            deductible insurance
the Dow                        the Tao
the Tao                         the Dow
quakers                        catholics

Why don’t you give it a try?

danah boyd brings us a discussion of "Glocalization" in the context of Web 2.0.  Danah says,

…there is a global influence that is altered by local
culture and re-inserted into the global in a constant cycle. Think of
it as a complex tango with information constantly flowing between the
global and the local, altered at each junction.

During the boom, there was a rush to get everything and everyone
online. It was about creating a global village. Yet, packing everyone
into the town square is utter chaos. People have different needs,
different goals. People manipulate given structures to meet their
desires. We are faced with a digital environment that has collective
values. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in search. For example, is
there a best result to the query "breasts"? It’s all about context,
right? I might be looking for information on cancer, what are you
looking for?

To this I’d like to add the concept of the info-shed.  I’ll use Luxembourg and wholIy contrived data as an example.  I suspect — but cannot prove today — that most of the bits originating in Luxembourg stay in Luxembourg.  And that the searches, the retrievals to Luxembourg have a uniquely Lux-ish quality.   Luxembourg is an info-basin within its own info-shed.  There is probably a larger info-shed that is the EU, and the Brits may help fill a transatlantic basin, their traffic combined with Canada and the US.  Both of these examples reflect a pernicious assumption about language as a dominant force on the info-shed and I have only started to unwrap the concept.  I could be way wrong, in which case it will be back to slamming the post moderns and other productive activities for me.  More on this later…

Harry makes the linkage between looting behavior and genetics.  The Tutor suggests the remedy.

"Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head."

Okay… I already cut and pasted this into email and sent it around some.  No reason not to lift it straight into the blog, it being so scientific and all… thanx for the laffs to sweet Betsy D. Vine

GV
Berkeley just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet
known to science. The new element has been named "Governmentium".

Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy
neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass
of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons,
which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called
peons.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes
Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it
has half as many peons, but twice as many morons.

Since
Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. It can be detected,
however, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.
A reaction that normally takes one minute or less will require a week
or more if contaminated by any Governmentium.

The half-life of
Governmentium is 4 years. It does not, however, decay, but instead
undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons
and deputy neutron exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will
actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more
morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. The characteristic of
moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is
formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration.

This hypothetical quantity is called "Critical Morass".

For god’s sake read this.  It answers all your questions.  Is cleavage work-safe?  A whip?  Michel Foucault? Hurry through those parts.   Get the graphics off the screen.  This is the stuff that dreams are made of.

I finally understand post-modernism.  It’s about what came next after "Fascist modernism."  Why didn’t I get that before?