Electronic Scribblings

Writer's Block: Invisibility cloak

If you could be invisible for a day, where would you go and what would you do? Do you think you might be upset by what you discovered? View 1428 Answers

Oddly I can't really think of much to REALLY do if I were invisible for a day.

Practical (ha! I'm invisible) ideas assuming no other impact to my life:
~ First I would call in sick to work
~ Let my Husband know so he didn't worry like crazy.
~ I couldn't drive (a car, with no driver?? Cops would get upset)
~ Walk to town and wander around listening in on people.
~ find some park and strip naked to feel the grass on my feet, the sun on my skin, the wind in my hair, without frightening people.

er. Thats it.

Now if I could magically transport myself to where I want to go... um, Avebury or Stonehenge and do the nude bit :)

um. I do have an imagination but the only other options I can think of is to either see if I can get into {insert sports club] changing room and see OMG!nuddie men' or teleport into Harrods and work out of other women really are that pretty under their clothes or if it is all a massive illusion ;) Less erotic than the former, being rather heterosexual, but still of interest.

How about you?

/edit/ oooh, a thought!

Be a fairy, one of the ones that sneaks into a house and does housework for the tired overworked soul there. Since I would be invisible they wouldn't have to feel embarassed that I saw the mess before, and I would try do bits that were sneaky, that they could think oh, did I do that before bed last night?

hmm, even that might be creepy.

How far would you go in punishing someone? Really?

Row over 'torture' on French TV

Background: Wikipedia / Milgrame Experiment
In the 60s Stanely Milgram created an experiment that aimed (apparently) to identify if Eichmann et al were really just following orders by creating a scenario in which Yale collgee students were enlisted to electrocute someone who answered questions incorrectly as part of an 'experiment to see if negative stimuli improved learning' (a fake study as the student, not the victim, was the one being studied). over 60% would administer a potentially lethal shock to the victim/learner (who wasn't actually wired up at all, simply acting the part).

The French TV programme replaces the psychological study with a game show scenario, with a host and an audience edging on the 'shocker' to administer the increasing voltages to another contestant when the victim fails to answer correctly . The victim, as ever, is faking it.

"Only 16 of the 80 participants stopped before the ultimate, potentially lethal shock. " 80%

Apparently "The show was billed as a warning against blindly obeying authority - and a critique of reality TV shows in which participants are humiliated or hurt." and of societies conditioning of people to obey, not disobey, authority.

We all think we wouldn't do it. But would we? if in the wrong place at the wrong time how easy would it to publically back out when pressured? Experiments like this make the test subject feel like a failure, that they are letting people down, or shaming them in public (depending on the 2 scenario's above). Not to mention the difference between a short term one off experiment versus week after week after week after month of conditioning to what is Right and Correct in your social world.

How easy is it to firstly think apart from the herd, and then act apart from the herd? There is always safety in numbers. Everyone else did it. Our teens say this: everyone else is doing it. Peer pressure. Conventionality. Normality. The need to fit in, belong, be part of the group.

NY Times: The Obesity-Hunger Paradox

NY Times: The Obesity-Hunger Paradox ~ an interesting look at the paradox that one of the US's most obese areas is also one where 37% have been unable to afford to eat during the last 12 months.
It also hints at the complex interaction between eating well needing money for good quality ingredients and the time to prepare them. Not easy when you are at the poverty level and working more than one job to make ends meet, eating while rushing around, grabbing what cheap food will fill you up fastest. Not to mention the binge eating that can come when you are not completely sure where the money is coming for next weeks food.

oh, and for those that think the school curiculum in the UK is rubbish, I present you the Texas amendments NY Times: Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change or the DIscover / Bad Astronomy view Texas Conservatives screw History ~ OK, neither a very conservative / republican view point ;) Basically the Texas group responsible for saying what kids can be taught has introduced some 'interesting' changes, and because Texas buys so many school books the companies producing said books tend to favour what they want over others. hmmm. be aware that if you read my LJ, you are probably a tad liberal and this is blood-pressure raising stuff.

Dead Asylums and VR Tattoo

Weburbanist / Abandoned Mental Asylum Hellingly, RIP, 33 Creepy Photo Tribute ~ Some really great and creepy photos. Particularly loved the one that mixed an old 'active' photo with the urban artist ruin photo.

Now, about the next... I am not completely sure about this as the website it is supposed to come from isn't obviously displaying it but does display links about it:
Augmented Reality mark: Holographic skin art by ThinkAnApp. ThinkAnApp.com has apparently come up with a bar-code tattoo that, when viewed via a cameraphone app, shows a VR flying dragon encoded.

BBC / US open carry article

Mark Mardell: Armed and ready to shop

Actually I find the comments on the article much more interesting and informative than the article, which is another "Europeans think the American's are crazy for wanting guns".

I only need to point out the situation in Switzerland, a country not noted for its rabid proponants (nearly typed Rabbit) of Gun ownership, gun crime and generally terrorising of its citizens. They have one of the highest militia gun ownership rates in the world (US / Yemen / Switzerland), in part as they are supplied guns as part of their militia training and reservist status.

Wikipedia / Gun politics in Switzerland
Wikipedia / List of countries by gun ownership ~ this does note that it is not a list of what % of the population owns guns, ie some people own more than 1.

I don't actually hate the idea of gun ownership but I rather dislike the idea of just anyone being able to get hold of one. Therefore in order to stop those I disaprove of having guns I must support regulation that prevents those I think ought to be allowed to have them.

Equally I rather like the idea of the Swiss concept. You can have them if you did military service and are then properly trained, part of the militia and have mandatory re-training on a regular basis. Much as we once did with the long bow in this country (UK).

Quote

"You can't help what you feel, but you can help what you do."

Random quote that I read and wished to save.

NSFW: Decorating your Lady Stuff (but guys might want to also!)

This may not be safe for work. Actually, if your work dislikes words specific to 'lady bits' or such it most definately is not. So, as this is public, it is cut for your viewing safety :)

Have you come across the spoof YouTube ad for Clitter ~ the glitter to sparkle up your clit?

well, I am at work and cannot go checking out whether this is a spoof or not but for your Friday Fun I bring you:

Vaj-tastic-vajazzling

"There is a new trend sweeping the nether regions of girls everywhere. It’s called vajazzling. If you don’t know what it is, you need to know. Basically, you spruce up the vajayjay area with crystals and decorations. People were already using the Bedazzler for fixing up hats and jeans until someone thought, hey, why can’t I spruce up my vajayjay? At Completely Bare Spa in NYC you can get Swarovski Crystals put on your hoo-hoo area but the quality of what gets put on for decorations varies on where you go. "

er.... thanks go to FriggingRandom.com for this.

um.... Part of me is shrieking in horror at the idea of putting THAT down THERE but the other is giggling manically at the idea that my faith in the bizarre nature of humanity is restored.

Who are you?

I have come to the odd realisation that while there are quite a few people who I know perfectly well on & offline (or only online), there are people I regularly get mixed up, think that I know X on LJ ~ is that Y offline, and did I meet them via CamUK or via IFIS or how? and thus my brain has got to the stage where I am quite sure I know some of you in some very odd ways.

I am reminded of this today as I was looking at my Flist and thinking... ok, I am pretty sure X is Y but I can't possibly ask as it is way way too embarassing. Not to mention the 2 blokes who I know both on LJ and offline who have a certain similarity in appearence and I regularly get mixed up >.<

So. I am facing 43, take pity if you wish and tell me who you are and how we know each other. If you choose not to, no worries mate! This is as much an aide memoire to allow me to use LJ's nifty notes option as anything. Oh, and it is open to everyone so that way I am not outing who I can't match offline/online ID's :D

View Poll: Compartmentalised Brain

Digital legacy

British Library warns UK's web heritage 'could be lost'

Currently the British Library is allowed a copy of every book published, under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act. Publishers automatically provide a copy. However they must ask the webmaster if they want to archive a webpage.

Slowly we are loosing early web pages. Now for a lot of sites that probably isn't an isssue: like teen poetry, some are best forgotten! Yet equally some of this is the modern equivalent of a bundle of letters, a diary, or a journal. We so often say if only we knew what they had to say, more about what was going on at the time.

I wonder if our blog sites will one day be considered the same sort of slice of life as those diaries, and future historians and sociolagists will bemone the massive loss of information from the early days of
computing where websites were disposable, like so many of our other toys.

Even today we are loosing memories as the people who can tell us stories are no longer around to tell us, or worse, unable to do so as Lisa Jardine wrote in her BBC article "When my mother was also painted gold...". Her mother has memory loss and lives in the present, stories lost to time, including those of her unconventional life (including the titular being painted gold) and cannot shed llight on her husband's diaries of his time in Japan visiting the recently bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Interestingly for many of us our blogs show a version of us that does not necessarily link back to a person. Some of you know my real name,but I don't ever use it online. I wonder what future researchers will make of our blogs, should they survive any longer than a paper version would.