Pirate Bay and "Cybernorms" Researchers Collaborating

"Pirate Bay becomes 'Research Bay' to aid P2P researchers"
The part that especially caught my eye was the conclusion from their 2009 report:

This reveals a large discrepancy between the viewpoint of copyright legislation and of young people regarding what is right and wrong. File sharers do not believe copyright legislation should interfere with how they use the Internet in their living rooms. If we choose to ignore this discrepancy, we run a clear risk of diminishing younger generations respect for rule of law.

Wait, we respect the rule of law? I mean, large swaths of law, sure, but as a whole? Not even close. Speeding laws? Alcohol? Pot? All widely considered dumb laws that much of the cultures I've experienced widely reject. And then of course there's mountains of laws that aren't simply dumb, they're overtly discriminatory or immoral. The rampant abuse of copyright law by the MPAA, RIAA, AP, etc is only one more in a long history of legislation that is contrary to the public opinion and common law. In addition to promoting outright "piracy" (I still hate that term, but it's less bad than the very misleading "theft."), I think this witch hunt is promoting a broadening of what we consider fair use in response. I have certainly seen that shift in my life at least, but I can't really say for the larger population(s).

confidence is an illusion

I came to this view of because people insist on viewing my various behaviors through the framework of confidence. When I have a realistic view of my ability to do some particular task well, I am labeled confident, as opposed to simply accurate. When I predict that I would be below average at some particular task, based on years of knowing myself, I am labeled unconfident when in fact I am simply right or wrong. Where does confidence come in?

I would extend this to optimism/pessimism - I hate those terms. They're both... useless.

engineered idea viruses

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert):

Ideas are a lot like viruses. Neither a virus nor an idea is alive, technically, but both reproduce though contact with other people. And both are hard to eradicate. For example, 20% of the American population believes Obama is a Muslim. That's actually an increase since he was inaugurated.

Most idea viruses are the bad type. But I see no reason we couldn't engineer good idea viruses. Such a virus would have three traits:

1. It must be catchy, so you never forget it.
2. It must be something you are inclined to share.
3. It must cause a positive change in the world.

our security theater obsession is directly tied to why we're losing the war(s) and putting ourselves in far greater danger

exactly. [via @Fraying and Gruber]
[edit:] and, to steal a great quote from the article that Gruber picked out:

Of course, the U.S. national security state has quite a different formula for engendering safety in America: fight the Afghan war until hell freezes over; keep the odd base or two in Iraq; dig into the Persian Gulf region; send U.S. Special Operations troops into any country where a terrorist might possibly lurk; and make sure the drones aren’t far behind. In other words, reinforce our war state by ensuring that we’re eternally in a state of war, and then scare the hell out of Americans by repeatedly insisting that we’re in imminent danger, that shoe, underwear, and someday butt bombers will destroy our country, our lives, and our civilization. Insist that a single percent of risk is 1 percent too much when it comes to terror and American lives, and then demand that those who feel otherwise be dealt with punitively, if they won’t shut up.

The New Cosmopolitan

Looking for fans is about looking for people who appear to have given a great deal of thought to how they dress and what they’re doing, and who have, in the process of applying all this thought to their daily lives, concluded that they would like to behave differently from the norm.
....
Reading Patterson’s recent biography of Robert A Heinlein, Learning Curve, I was struck by how much fringey stuff old RAH dabbled in: telepathy, radical politics, polyamory (or ‘‘companionate marriage,’’ as it was called in his day), nudism, and all manner of funny business, all of which is reflected in his books, and all of which can be summed up with ‘‘all laws are local.’’

It's rather arrogant of me to claim this, but I like to believe that this is the philosophy of my entire life. I think that this is why the geek worlds tend to be much more embracing of things like "alternate" gender presentation, "fringe" sexuality, or many "nontraditional" lifestyles in general with barely a second thought.
[via Waxy Links]

"smart-phone" is an inaccurate name and why phone calls are so annoying

... When my so-called phone rings, my first reaction is "Shit. What's wrong now?" When I get an email or text message, I feel a tingle of optimism.

Text and email are polite invitations to a conversation. They happen at the speed and leisure of both the sender and the receiver. In stark contrast, when you get a phone call, it's almost always a convenient time for the caller and a bad time for the recipient, who I refer to as the "victim" because I insist on accuracy. My philosophy is that every phone conversation has a loser.

Yes, yes, and more yes. [via Marco]

addressing the real root-cause of the tech industry gender imbalance

the formative childhood years, vs the young adult years: "Why We Don't Need More Women in Tech... Yet" [via Felicia Day]
(also, DITTO FOR SCIENCE - it's actually one of the things my Mom has been working on in her museum exhibit design career a lot - science is way too marginalized in our schools and society in general and has been for several decades now)

HijiNKS ENSUE - "Oxford English Urban Dictionary"

heee

"Building a Nation of Know-Nothings"

NY Times editorial on the horrifying political scene we have with even basic facts flagrantly lied about - this terrifies me - it is distressing how easily our species falls for this over and over again... and if we have this sort of purposely-spread lies/nonsense/ignorance on things so basic and fundamental, how the fuck can we make progress on things like transgender rights or not causing our own extinction or fixing our poverty gap... [via Daring Fireball]

quote of the day

“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s okay to be a boy; for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that BEING A GIRL IS DEGRADING.“

- Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden (since quoted in a slightly more high-profile context)
[via femme guy]

quote of the day

"Trying to describe the gender spectrum using only 'man' & 'woman' is like trying to describe the color wheel using only 'red' & 'blue'"

- Genderfork

'deep' thought of the day

'

gender' is a concept that doesn't exist in my mental world - it's a translation layer wedged between my brain and the outside world

[first posted to my twitter]

kickstarter project to fund a documentary on asexuality

I'm really hopeful to see how this turns out...

[via Kottke]

brain-dump thoughts on bridging the gap between 'leaders' and 'public'

[Presumably this will be turned into coherent english at some point, but for now I wanted to get my thoughts down and I figured some of you might be interested to see one of my brain-dumps edited just enough to be semi-comprehensible to others. Amusingly-enough turning this from my shorthand into something I figured you could actually follow more than quadrupled its length...]:

Very common problem with any organization: general 'public'/membership don't know what's going on with the leaders/who the people in any given possition are (elected, appointed, hired, volunteered, conscripted, blackmailed), what they're up to, what current business is being transacted
--> public too lazy to bother to find out or to listen when that info is shared - is somewhat their own damned fault
--> but as with all design issues anything that's "user-error" is almost always a faulty design that influences people to behave in an undesirable manner - if widespread is (almost) always structural design flaw (see The Design Of Everyday Things by Norman - READ IT NOW!!)
--> leaders/people in specific positions don't advertise this enough, don't distribute info widely enough in dif mediums, don't run things "open source" enough
--> depending on demographics, learning styles, lifestyles people have differing mediums to learn info that do/don't work as well - relying on just one medium will leave out too many
(side/related issue: email vs phone vs text vs im vs face-to-face - each mediums have strengths/weaknesses - each medium preferred by dif people depending on their learning styles, lifestyles, familiarity, context - dif mediums inaccessible to dif demo's and disenfranchise certain groups - need to understand this to communicate effectively w/ various people)
--> examples: umASS residence life, umASS bureaucracy in general, town govs, smaller obscure gov agencies, etc
--> need to offer as many oportunities for public to interact as possible - will get more active involvement, people will feel more empowered, will have better respect for the work that is getting done, will be more willing to pay for the work being done
--> can never reach everyone, too many people don't care, don't want to know - what's the right balance? when leave them to their bliss and tell them to shove off when they bitch unjustifiably?

A Bench You Pay To Sit On

A only-mildly-excessive jab at the American anti-tax nonsense - "Almost Genius"

PAY & SIT: the private bench (HD) from Fabian Brunsing on Vimeo.

[via Planetizen]

Know Your Meme

is a totally addictive site - for discovering new memes, remembering old memes, figuring out what the deal is with memes you only kinda understood, and apparently even watching a podcast all about memes... [via Tekzilla Daily]

don't be a hero

this is exactly my issue with the American workaholic culture (and a major pet peeve) - Acton-Boxborough is the classic example of a high school that encourages exactly this unhealthy toxic behavior, and I continue to see it in the engineering and architecture fields - this is one of the reasons I'm not taking the conventional umASS architecture track. [via Marco]

tech chances driving faster generation changes

Not buying all the conjectures and conclusions he draws [via Joe S], but I definitely agree that my freshman come from a distinctly different generation than the upperclassmen, despite being only a couple years apart. I see huge behavioral differences between groups less than five years apart based largely on when a given technology or service came into prevalence and their particular habits where formed, because once those habits are formed they tend to be more rigid for most people. It's also interesting seeing the blurring of these generation gaps with the geekier early adopters versus the resistant hold-outs. There are entirely different internet subcultures based simply on when people started surfing on a regular basis - it's all incredibly fascinating!

attempting to solve a social conflict through architecture

a fascinating attempt to explore the social conflict in Switzerland over mosque minarets from an architectural perspective

offensive gender-segregation propaganda thinly disguised as "safety"

I should preface this by stating that I find gender segregation of any kind to be as offensive as racial segregation. Gender, just like race, is a purely artificial social construct with no basis in science (remember, gender does not equal sex), and critically enough, IS NOT BINARY. There are not just 2 genders - there are a great many people who fall somewhere on the gender continuum that is not man or woman. Where are those of us who aren't simply 'man' or 'woman' supposed to go?? And why the hell should we have to choose in the first place?? I won't go into the additional practical issues of why I think gender-neutral bathrooms are better, particularly in a dorm setting (and don't get me started on the fact that most other schools I've been to use gender-neutral bathrooms but somehow that's just too damned scary for UMass...). Anyways, when I saw that this was included in the "safety poster" packet I got as an RA, I flipped out. If you want to discuss it as a social comfort and norms issue, fine, but don't confuse matters by trying to tie segregation to safety. It's bad enough that I am expected to enforce this offensive policy as my job...