As a very young child, my son Jai had an unaccountable aversion to learning any language other than English. Yet, I was determined to teach him Hindi, my mother tongue, to ensure he did not miss out on a culture and heritage for lack of simple knowledge of its language.

I would point to his clothes, toys and books and encourage him to respond with their Hindi names. Eventually, he spoke a few words — he could point to a chair and call it kursi and say the numbers from 1 to 10 in Hindi. But he did not know simple phrases such as "How are you?" or "My name is Jai." He could not have a conversation in Hindi.

That all changed during a trip to India when Jai was 4. I was sitting with my mother on the floor, shelling peas. As we were laughing and talking, Jai wandered over, picked up a pea pod with great curiosity and asked what it was. It is mattar, my mother told him. Peas? he wondered. Inside this? He loved the fact that he could open the pod and find a treasure. He opened one, then another and another. He sat still, which in itself was an achievement. He began to listen to us, to ask questions.

Some mothers like to color with their young children, some read books, some watch television. I could never have imagined our time together would be used to shell peas.

Once we were back in the States, I searched supermarkets and farmers' markets for peas in pods. I rinsed them, patted them dry and waited for 3 o'clock so I could pick up Jai from school and we could shell peas. When pea pods were hard to find, I cheated, more than once passing off edamame as peas. Rarely were we able to eat the peas for dinner; by the time Jai's tiny fingers got them out of the pods, they were too squished or had gone straight into his mouth. I didn't care as long as we sat and shelled and talked...

We didn't want to get stuck with a lemon. That's what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said to a House committee last month. He was referring to the "virtual fence" planned for the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada. If the entire project goes as badly as the 28-mile prototype, it could turn out to be one of the most expensive lemons in history, projected to cost $8 billion by 2011.

Boeing, the company that landed the contract "the largest ever awarded by the Department of Homeland Security" announced this week that it will finally test the fence after months of delay due to computer problems. Heavy rains have confused its remote-controlled cameras and radar, and the sensors can't tell the difference between moving people, grazing cows or rustling bushes.

But this debacle points to more than faulty technology. It exposes the faulty logic of the Bush administration's vision of a hollowed-out government run everywhere possible by private contractors.

[...]

Shaun's symbolism comes in the form of the romantic story. The movie, often referred to as a "rom zom com" (romantic zombie comedy), actually serves as a sort of cinematic relationship guide, comically instructing us about dealing with commitment issues. Look at the order in which the members of Shaun's party are killed (killed dead, not undead): #1: his stepfather (Bill Nighy); #2: his mum (Penelope Wilton); #3: the other guy who loves his girl (the underrated Dylan Moran, who must be seen in Run Fatboy Run); #4: his roommate (Peter Serafinowicz); and finally, #5: his immature best friend (Nick Frost). These are the people that have to die in order for Shaun (Simon Pegg) to devote his full attention to Liz (Kate Ashfield). In real, non-lethal terms, they are the people Shaun has to let go of before he can fully connect in a relationship.
Who hasn't had to deal with one or more of these examples when in love? I don't want to get all psychological about it, especially with the mama's boy stuff, but certainly everybody has had that good friend who has to be compromised somewhat because he or she poses a threat to the relationship. The interesting thing is that Ed doesn't actually have to die, whereas the rest of the threats do. The roommate one is a little less obvious than the others, in the sense that he's just representational of the bachelor pad. And there's probably other characters that can also be considered in the order, such as the bartender, who personifies Shaun's penchant for hanging out in a bar and drinking too much.

A drunken former soldier who urinated on a disabled neighbour as she lay dying after a fall in the street was jailed for three years yesterday and told that he and his friends had shamed a town. Anthony Anderson, 27, and a group of friends who filmed the humiliation of Christine Lakinski on a mobile phone, have been cold-shouldered in Hartlepool and turned away from shops and neighbours' homes.
[...]
Sue Jacobs, prosecuting, said Anderson first kicked the helpless woman and when she groaned but failed to move or open her eyes, fetched a bowl of water and threw it over her. "Apparently urged on by the fact that Scott Clement and Simon Whitehead found this amusing, you then stated that you were going to urinate on her. Simon Whitehead cleared space on his mobile and recorded Anderson urinating all over Christine's body." One of the group shouted: 'This is YouTube material.'"

Still, the people who wanted fairytales found the book, and some of them knew what it was, and liked it for being exactly that. One of those people was film-maker Matthew Vaughn.

I tend to be extremely protective when it comes to adaptations of my work, but I enjoyed the screenplay and I really like the film they made - which takes liberties with the plot all over the place. (I know I didn’t write a pirate captain performing a can-can in drag, for a start ...)

A star still falls, a boy still promises to bring it to his true love, there are still wicked witches and ghosts and lords (although the lords have now become princes.) They even gave the story an unabashedly happy ending, which is something people tend to do when they retell fairytales.

Relations between the Russians and the Norwegians on Svalbard are generally good, but disagreements do occur. About a year ago, the Norwegians were convinced the Russian community suffered from a lack of vitamins, so a Longyearbyen chef sent over six tons of fresh food. This was not well received by Trust Arktikugol. In an article in Svalbardposten, the local Longyearbyen paper, the general director was quite incensed with this gift. He conceded a lack of fruits and veggies in Barentsburg for a short while, but that did not entail a crisis. Understandably, this was humiliating for the Russian authorities.

I don't know what to make of this episode. The food shipment, although well-intentioned, might have been a bit hasty. After all, nobody dies from a temporary lack of fruit. At any rate, alcohol seems to be plentiful. Some years ago, 14 seagulls were found dead on a rubbish-tip. The gulls were sent to Oslo to be autopsied, and were found to have died from alcohol poisoning.

Those crazy machine fuckers lovers at Monochrom are already gearing up (ahem) for next year's conference with an open call for sex machine makers to compete for the prize of "Prixxx Arse," an "unobjectionable award for sex machines, orgasmotrons and teledildonics."

Their team of specialists tells us that it's a fully open call for machinery asking for, "a PDF containing description and pictures of your working device or a detailed proposal by April 30, 2008. We plan to present the winners of Prixxx Arse Elektronika in autumn 2008 @ Arse Elektronika." We're hoping that whoever wins the prize can deliver an opening night demo worthy enough for us to say, "Move over, Fuckzilla" ... followed by a battle royale of mechanized monster machine mayhem!

As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Giorgio Agamben published an article that took issue with security as the "basic principle" of state politics. Referring to Foucault, Agamben contrasted security and disciplinary power, describing security as a characteristic of liberalism: "Measures of security can only function within a context of freedom of traffic, trade and individual initiative." He further argued that through the "progressive surrender of traditional tasks of the state, security imposes itself as the basic principle of state activity" becoming the "sole criterion of political legitimation." Further, Agamben argued that "a state which has security as its only task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to turn itself terroristic." The progressive erosion of civic rights that occurs when "security imposes itself" indicates a deep-layered incompatibility between democratic legitimacy and security. To this end, Agamben called for a "revision of the concept of security" as a project of immediate importance.

This article is an attempt to contribute to such a revision by discussing security in terms of the concept of tragedy. There are two reasons why this is useful. The first is the apparently inescapable, "fateful" character of security, that which imposes itself as a final instance of authority, knows no appeal, and delivers no explanations that would not be self-identical. Security knows no radical "other" and therefore, in a tragic turn, security can only be "secured" by insecurity, i.e. its self-affirmation is identical with its self-negation. Secondly, if this is the case, critical statements concerning security are then also in danger of becoming identical with their object. The tragic, then, offers itself as perhaps the only remaining "methodology" of a revision to the concept of security.

[...]

While King Lear is regarded as arguably the greatest of all Shakespearian tragedies, it is not uncommon for postmodern critics to bring "a deep distrust of all attempts at closure" in their approach to text, the inherent complexities of which seem to suggest the "negation of the possibility of unity, coherence, and resolution." However, in Ran, Akira Kurosawa's cinematic adaptation of the play, whatever indeterminacy that might be evident in King Lear appears to have become subordinated to an essentially Aristotelian definition of tragedy, marked by "the representation of an action that is complete and whole" through "unity of plot." Through a comparative analysis of certain key cinematic elements in Ran, we will see how the inherent nature of the film medium is harnessed to present not only a picture of profound existential desolation, but also a deeper philosophical discourse exploring the nature of aesthetic and religious transcendence.

(*)
There was a young man named Kleene
Who invented a fucking machine.
Concave or convex,
It fit either sex,
And was remarkably easy to clean!

(limerick, attributed to John von Neumann)

The music-industry lobbying-and-litigation arm is protesting a federal magistrate's recommendation that it cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for an Oregon woman. Tanya Andersen, 42, says she racked up the expenses defending against an RIAA infringement lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed for lack of evidence... The RIAA is arguing in court documents that the association shouldn't have to pay defense counsel fees, because Andersen is probably guilty anyway.

"Step aside maestro. Would-be conductors now have a system that allows them to change the tempo and dynamics of a virtual orchestra with the wave of a hand... Instead of a baton, [a scientist] equips the would-be conductor with an eWatch, a computer the size and shape of a large wristwatch that contains accelerometers and tilt sensors."

There are three versions of the Monkey King on Chinese television. And a fourth as rather bad animation on the aircraft channels. None of them is good, but one of them has actors who believe their subjects. They are all about Monkey and his two companions - of whom one is a humanoid pig - escorting a pious and naïve monk across the Himalayas to India to discover the Buddhist scriptures. He must battle legions of demons all the way, and thus face a different demon king every day on the never-ending television renditions of the epic journey.

But Monkey is doing this as recompense. It is his purgatory. A thousand years ago - maybe it was ten thousand years ago - he rebelled against Heaven. And failed of course. He was first pinioned under a mountain for a thousand - or ten thousand - years, then offered the chance of forgiveness but only if he played his leading part in bringing the scriptures back to China and thus converting the vast nation. Well, not really converting the nation. People, and monks, were Buddhists by intuition. They needed only schooling - rigour, guidance, and prohibitions. Monkey established the forbear of the Party, and was inducted into Heaven for his pains - and probably those of the Chinese people today. Watching any one of the Monkeys on television, and his running around on clouds, one hopes that today at least a demon king might finally teach the simian rascal a lesson. Like smash his simpering hairy face in. Crush his smug temples. Ram his golden quarterstaff up his ass until it shoots out of his gaping mouth. [...]

Omaha artist Scott Blake is well-known for his cheeky bar code art, and now he’s going global this fall with a trip to Europe. Blake will spend a week with fellow artist and blogger Sean Bonner (seanbonner.com) at Net Culture Lab in Vienna. Bonner, there for a month-long residency, invited Blake to come for a week and present his work. Net Culture Lab is part of Monochrom Presents, a Vienna-based, art-technology-philosophy group. Its focus is on "pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism" right up Blake’s alley. To learn more visit barcodeart.com, http://www.monochrom.at and lab.netculture.at.

once, whilst drinking with a psycholinguist (say that after a few pints) I was taught a useful way of quickly working out the stressed syllable in any English word - something which is apparently called the 'fuck test'. Simply insert the word 'fucking' into the word, as if you were using the swear word for emphasis, and the syllable that follows the 'fucking' is the stressed syllable. For example, absolutely -> abso-fucking-lutely. The stressed syllable is the third: i.e. absolutely. It works for every multi-syllable word I've found so far. Which just goes to show that psycholinguists are some of the coolest melonfarmers in the whole of cognitive science.

This weekend, Kink.com hosted the first annual Arse Elektronika Conference, a 3-day event that sought to examine the relationship between pornography and technological innovation through a series of speakers, panels, demonstrations, films and performances. Partially funded by the Austrian government, this international conference brought together over 25 experts who led discussions ranging from the sociology of small-town American sex machine inventors to how sexual minorities are using developing technology to democratize sexual information. With over 200 attendees and extensive positive media attention the Arse Elektronika conference represented a conquest for all involved. Kink.com was particularly proud to sponsor an event where technology, sexuality, and sociology could merge in a forum where their impact on each other would not only be examined, but also valued as a significant contribution to an important collective discourse.

URGENT ALERT: Thanks to Professor Grenzfineski's recently installed EEW system, we have detected a sudden upsurge in undead activity throughout the city. Another attack is IMMINENT.

But rather than passively wait in fear, we are striking back! With the Professor's assistance, a zombie homing beacon has been hastily assembled and installed at the Main Library's north-western corner on Larkin Street, by Fulton.

This device will be switched on TOMORROW night, Thursday the 11th, at PRECISELY 7:30pm. Once activated, the undead hordes will be unable to resist its pull, and will gather immediately at its base, where we will attempt to neutralize them before they can once again terrorize our fair city.

NOTE: Great care must be taken with this operation, as a San Francisco Mayoral debate will be taking place in the Main Library. If we are unable to contain the zombies, it is highly likely that they will turn their attention to the hundreds of citizens exiting the debate at 7:45, whom, though disenfranchised, are not disembrained, and may thus prove irresistible to the shambling cerebrophiles.

There are certain events (temporary autonomous zones or TAZs) where you feel like you're living in a future society, or a future world. I often had this feeling during 70s Punk Rock Shows, or talking to J.G. Ballard and William S. Burroughs, and always at Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) shows. People say they experience this at Burning Man. I definitely got this feeling attending ARSE ELEKTRONIKA, curated by the Vienna art group "monochrom," hosted by kink.com (and others) at a no-sign location on Jessie St between 5th and 6th Sts.

[...]

The black painted interior led to a bar area on the left, a bathroom on the right (patronized by both sexes simultaneously) and straight ahead was the main audience room, with the stage to the left. Decor was authentic medieval castle, with iron rings everywhere. The ceiling had dozens of light fixtures — this was a film set. Behind the "auditorium" were authentic-looking prison cells, a community shower, and horse stables (sans horses). The audience was mostly dressed in dark clothes, with at least three people sporting neon magenta or bright red hair. Two young people had mohawks (more on them later).

The beginning of the Arse Elektronika was introduced by Johannes Grenzfurthner, a very amusing off-the-cuff speaker who is capable of instant improvised oblique responses to any question. The conference's focus was on pornography and its role in catalyzing/inspiring/leading the invention of new technology. As J.G. Ballard put it, "Sex times technology equals the future" (1972?) and the A.E. event fleshed out this prophecy, literally. There were new ideas introduced every hour, and some of them may have fallen into the category of "too much information." As this is a "family"-appropriate newsletter, much of what was witnessed will have to be withheld until later...

[...]

DORKBOT: TODD BLAIR FUNDRAISER

It’s dorkbot time again. However, this is a very special dorkbot where 100% of the proceeds will go directly to support our friend and long-time dorkbot supporter, Todd Blair. Todd a 15+ year veteran of SRL as well as collaborator with Tim North, Chico McMurtrie, Lynn Hershman, and countless other visionaries, suffered serious head trauma in an unfortunate accident in Amsterdam after the recent SRL performance there for Robodock. He remains in a coma and his injuries are severe.

Due to the generous donations of Kyle Minor, Eric Paulos, dorkbotSF, many SRL members, and our speakers, we are able to pass on all of the proceeds from this dorkbot to the family of Todd Blair for his recovery efforts which are expected to be quite substantial.

Please join us in celebrating Todd’s recovery in this special dorkbotSF event.

When:
Oct 10 2007 Wednesday 7:30pm

Where:
Kyle Minor Design Studio
Pier 33
Embarcadero @ Bay
SF
http://kyleminordesign.com

Speakers:

Ken Goldberg - Robots As Environmentalists: Searching for the Ivory
Billed Woodpecker using Robotic Observatories for Natural Environments
http://www.c-o-n-e.org

Eric Paulos - Citizen Science
http://www.paulos.net

monochrom
http://monochrom.at

Steven Lassovszky - Airplane GPS/Telemetry
http://loc-nar.com

Joe Grand
http://grandideastudios.com/

Mark Pauline
http://srl.org

AUCTION with auction master Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom
(list of auction items to be posted on the dorkbot site soon)

CASH BAR

Catering by Marc Powell
http://foodhacking.com

Gifts

DONATION: $10 or more if you can

http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsf/

Backup, the German edition of my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has just been published by Heyne. Down and Out was the first novel released under a Creative Commons licensed, distributed for free on the same day the book was shipped to stores — and I'm pleased to announce that Backup is the first German translated novel to be released under a CC license on publication day!

Random House is also working on a German translation of my second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, working with Michael Iwoleit, the translator who worked on Down and Out.

Many thanks to Johannes and Evelyn at Monochrom for their help in translating the oddball concepts like "Whuffie" and "Bitchun Society."

- Shake Well Before Use (Ariel Waldman)

- Suicide Bots

- qDot

- Sean Bonner

- Lane Hartwell

- Jonathan Lassoff

Call it pornovation or sex-tech. No matter the label, the marriage of sex and technology is gaining more attention. And now the Arse Elektronika conference will spend this weekend discussing how software and hardware are getting funky under the sheets.

This weekend in San Francisco, futurists, tech experts, sexologists, and a who's-who list of emergent sex and technology experts are lined up for talks and panels at Arse Elektronika 2007, a conference about "pr0n and innovation" — or the intersections of sex and technology. At our local Porn Palace, this first-of-its-kind international meeting of the (very geeky) minds on the subject of sex and tech looks to be both a humorous (ahem) poke at past sci-fi visions of "future sex" and some realistic explorations of technology's undeniably constant relationship with sex.

Or maybe it's just what happens when you combine the monkeys with the typewriters. You know, you either get Shakespeare or a monkey humping a keyboard. Likely, both — but I think many of us hope it's a pleasant combination of the two. Most often, it's not. For instance, there's some yummy porn on my iPod right now, but still some scientists feel the need to invent electronic singing condoms. Deep down, I can't help but think these powers need to be used for good, not evil.

[...]

It's surprising that Arse — named teasingly after the highly respected international art and technology festival Ars Electronica — is the first conference of its kind. Looking at the schedule of speakers and demonstrations, it's refreshingly far and away from the typical porn (or sex, or tech for that matter) conference.

This Sunday at 1 PM I'm giving a talk called "A Futurist's History of Technology" in San Francisco at a conference called Arse Elektronika, devoted to pornography and technological innovation. Mostly it will be a tour of sexual technologies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including some devices that may surprise you. I'll conclude by talking about where we’re headed with sexual technologies over the next 50 years.

If you want to come out and say hi, get more details at the Arse Elektronika conference site. The conference starts Friday, and there will be awesome speakers all day Saturday and Sunday, including Carol Queen, Violet Blue, Kyle Machulis, and many more!