Nothing and Some More

Hello world... again! Am I Ugly in Grey, or what ??

pop.ul.ar

Looking for the The Google Font? It is Catull, but found out more about the Google logo by reading the Google Font Page

Fancy reading my Looking for the Spam collection ? It's even getting multilingual

Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux... want to try it ??? Knoppix is really nice. And easy. Download, burn, reboot. Et voila, Linux is running...

Sex, Toys and more - 26 janvier 2006

Village Voice: Tool of the Patriarchy: Performers like Kimberly Kane challenge anti-porn rhetoric

Have anti-porn feminists watched any porn recently? If you are going to critique a body of work, you should be relatively well versed in it.

I finally watched the lastest George Carlin HBO special: Life is Worth Losing and I've learned TWO new words: dingleberry (not the plant) and cornhole (not the game)

Still, my favorite part was the opening, I'm a Modern man. Lucky for you, that's also the preview HBO is offering.

I'm a modern man, a man for the millennium, digital and smoke free. A diversified multicultural postmodern deconstructionist, politically anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I've been uplinked and downloaded, I've been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I'm a high tech lowlife, a cutting edge state-of-the-art bicoastal multitasker,and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.

EETimes has some coverage of the CES. They selected a few interesting grown up toys:

SkyScout Personal Planetarium: simply point the SkyScout at any star in the sky and click the "target" button. The SkyScout will instantly tell you what object you are looking at.

Z800 3DVisor 3d visor, a Head Mounted Displays for immersive 3D adventure for all and for only $900.

Exer-station or how to lose weight while playing videogame.

Gros et pauvre, the sequel: France Battles a Problem That Grows and Grows: Fat

The trend line is most significant among children. While adult obesity is rising about 6 percent annually, among children the national rate of growth is 17 percent. At that rate, the French could be - quelle horreur - as fat as Americans by 2020. (More than 65 percent of the population in the United States is considered overweight or obese.)

A comparer avec l'article équivalent Obésité : la France sur la voie des Etats-Unis du Monde (via NaSM :) )

Since we're into losing weight, Video dance game to be used in 765 West Virginia public schools to help fight obesity

In [Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)], players must dance on a large pad lined with sensors, timing their rapid steps carefully to the music and to video prompts on the screen.[...]The program in West Virginia will roll out in the coming weeks at 103 middle schools and junior high schools and will reach the remaining schools by the end of the 2006-07 school year. The games, which will run on Microsoft Xboxes, will be incorporated into physical education curricula and after-school programs.[...] the Dance Dance Revolution unit being purchased by West Virginia costs $740 each. Konami will take in about $30 for each game.

Another Dance game related info, in Korea they do Massively multiplayer Dancing. Much more interesting than WoW!!!(via Waxy Links)

While in Asia, enjoy the beautiful China.

InTheseTimes When Red Goes Green: about the Chinese environmental movement

"There is also little honesty from the government on environmental issues because they fear the truth might cause turmoil in society," says Kongjian Yu, dean of the graduate school of landscape architecture at Peking University and an environmental campaigner. "This is still a society in transition and China's top priority is stability and growth."

The excellent article The Great Leap: Scenes from China's industrial revolution also talk about the environmental challenges in China.

An interesting movie Basic Interests (信天游) about China, based on the documentary book of the same name. There is an alternative cover for the VCD with english subtitles edited by MEIAH

MiddleProxy is a chinese learning web proxy. It rewrites chinese pages with links to the dictionnary for each character. It uses CEDICT

NYTimes: Why Is Everybody Going to Cambodia?: because it's worth it!!! (alternative archive on Camnews) (via New Economist)

But not all guides are expert at deftly avoiding the tourist crush, and there are frequently days when it seems everybody is in Cambodia. In 2004, international arrivals topped one million for the first time, a figure reached in 2005 by the end of September, according to the Ministry of Tourism.

A MarketPlace segment: How do we compete? about the book How We Compete : What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make it in Today's Global Economy (and research) by Suzanne Berger, Political Science Professor at MIT, on outsourcing and offshoring.

Did you find in your research that attitude differed between the US and other countries, do you think American businesses are quicker to send jobs overseas, perhaps because of pressure from investors from Wall Street ?
Yes, in fact in the 700 interviews we did, they were clear differences between the choices, let's say of the Japanese and of the Americans companies in the same business. The Japaneses were very relunctant to outsource and they were more reluctant to offshore. First of all, it's pretty hard to lay people off in Japan, there is a kind of social shame or stigma about laying off workers. But starting from the social attitude, the Japanese looked around for what kind of product could actually use the skills of the workers they had. Whereas I think Americans companies usually think that the workers they have now don't correspond exactly to the need they going to have in 2 years, they can just get rid of the workers they have now, and hire a new set of workers in the workplace if the need arises. And on long term, I think it spells trouble, not only for employment in the USA, but I think it also spells trouble for innovation in American companies, because innovation tends to grow out of a kind of surplus or excess capacity, that when something new appear in your periphery, you have the kind of workers, technicians and engineers that can jump into a new area. And if you strip your workforce down to the bone, you're just not going to have the kind of people or antennas out there to detect the new idea, nor the kind of workforce that is going to be able to plunge into making it
26 janvier 2006 Clés: