dish

Well, here's an interesting post that I came across today. It's written under pseudonym and I'm a little struck by how many people are turned off by the assertion. The knee-jerk reaction to the article is likely zomg this girl is so shallow or "holy crap, I better get a prenup in searching for a partner". I'm not going to debate that but I'm glad that the touchy subject was raised and it should certainly be a bit alarming for both men and women looking for a family partner.

I can say for sure that I respect this woman's life decision and would even go so far as to say that it is indeed a very feminist viewpoint as she claims. It's extremely respectable for anyone to see a clear role in life. This woman will likely lead a responsible and solid family (if she finds what she is looking for). Is it really so bad to crystallize the tit-for-tat? I often imagine that a feminist role can almost work in any direction. A woman could just as easily take responsibility for carrying the riches but the dude better be damn well committed to taking care of the family.

This woman is precocious for writing this article and anticipating the fair amount of criticism. Is it possible to find an equally staunch male who will write that he wants to take care of family and marry up? If so, then I hope he is not met with as much criticism because there are plenty of women looking for just that. If not, then we should all reconsider who the shallow ones really are.

In trying to understand what the chit-chat behind SOPA is all about, I realized that I haven't made a blog post in a long while. You can find out everything you need to know about the proposal on wikipedia but I'll try to summarize here before moving on to the thing that I actually wanted to share.

SOPA stands for "Stop Online Piracy Act". On the surface, it makes a lot of sense. If you're a content producer, you need to protect the stuff that you generate. That means others can't do things like copy images without proper permission. There are a few obvious problems. The whole act is hard to enforce and it could open up a hole where a large player like Vevo could use legislation to get at a small blog. That's kind of like giving Chanel more ammo to sue the little handbag copycats out there.

It would be non-trivial, but possible to engineer a workaround by anybody who cares enough and wants to. For example, something like Napster where content is distributed on a "second internet" could be engineered to circumvent the system. There's also a lot of other potential systems that could get around the legislation. For example, one could encrypt data. One could try to deploy a distributed domain naming service. One could get very creative and employ some of the very neat systems research techniques that have been discussed in academia. I'm not saying that one shouldn't voice their opinion in support of or against the legislation. The act may or may not be relevant and the privacy push itself in some shape or form is inevitable. I'm just saying that depending on who you are, you could consider more carefully where efforts are best spent.

That's really all I have to say about the subject and it's enough of a hohum to preface the pictures I came across. I was at the Cambridge Public Library on Friday just browsing the local stacks and I came across a biography on Patty Boyd. Is it just me or does this shot of her look exactly like that old Brittney Spears album cover? Looks like someone else made a similar association but it feels more than just the outfit match ...

I made these light up Jem earrings for a Jem costume. Who is Jem?

A wonderful surprise to have Dan Butterworth (http://www.butterworthproductions.com/Meet_The_Puppeteer.html) share his craft with us during tea.

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photo_puppets_during_halloween.zip (12.09 MB)

Neha's Indian food was fantastic and I got some practice in with the camera with some patient girls (the best pics I think are still from using autofocus)

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photo-from-femgroup-i-T2cwNcwDqCWTcWf2T4WR.zip (14.59 MB)

First pictures taken with my new SLR camera

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photo_new_SLR_camera.zip (3.68 MB)

Me: "Hi, my name is Grace. This is the fourth time I've met you, but you've gotten nicer every time."

Marvin: "I must have my guard down"

Me: "Yes, probably. The first time was when you were in heated discussion with Leon Lederman during my high school days almost a decade ago."

Marvin: "Oh yes, that school which thinks it can fix education with billions of dollars."

Me: "Right."

Marvin: "Good evening"

This is a picture of a screw I took with my webcam today.