http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3581573.stm 04:23
Archives
This month: 20 entries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/28/magazine/28COACH.html “Coach Fitz’s Management Theory.” 04:32
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?040301crbo_books Is too much choice a bad thing? “It helps explain why so many people at age thirty are still flailing about, trying to choose a career—and why so many marriageable singles wind up alone.” 03:41
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/magazine/14WWLN.html Michael Ignatieff reassesses his support for the war. He doesn’t get to the point of regretting it, but he does come close. (“… I supported an administration whose intentions I didn’t trust, believing that the consequences would repay the gamble. Now I realize that intentions do shape consequences.”) 01:44
http://slate.msn.com/id/2097751/ “How did movie zombies get so fast?” (Short answer: special effects.) See also Standards for Vampires. 01:25
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,
1178723,00.html Fun piece on accents in film. 02:57
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17015 Splendid book review: Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. The reviewer (following his source) argues that modern demonisation of masturbation began during the Enlightenment. Because it was in its climactic moments deeply private, because it dealt with fantasy, and because it was thought to be insatiable it defied reason—and therefore was to be distrusted. (I don’t quite follow the argument here, but it’s worth reading anyway.) 02:55
http://slate.msn.com/id/2097801/ “Do Unbuilt Architects Get Paid?” (Re Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-born architect who just won the Pritzker Prize (she’s always described as Iraqi-born) had, until five years ago completed just one building—a fire station.) 22:15
http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2004/feature_
price_marapr04.html Short piece on the preparer of last meals for those
about to be executed. 06:37
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/
03/21/nsign21.xml A few interesting issues here: standard British sign
language apparently has such gestures as a hand miming a crooked
nose for “Jew,” a limp wrist for a homosexual. A TV
show for deaf people recently decided to change these signs to
some less offensive whereupon the acting chairperson (note
chairperson!) declared that the changes were a form of
discrimination, in part because the changes were made without
consulting deaf people, I think. (Also: the sign for a Chinese
person changed from pulling the eye into a slant to miming some
sort of Chinese national dress, which doesn’t seem all that
much better.) 04:04
http://www.md5crk.com/?sec=howinsecure Project to find two strings with the same MD5 hash, I think. This is quite irresponsibly described, because they give the impression that internet commerce is doomed if a collision is found; it’s not. (About cryptographic hash functions: a hash function has the form y = f(x). That is, the function is given some number (x) as input (or file; files can be considered to be one big long number), and it returns some other number (y) as output. In the case of the MD5 hash function, the number returned is always 128 bits (about 30 digits) long. Cryptographic hash functions are supposed to have the feature that given y, you can’t figure out what x might have been. (Compare to y = f(x) = x + 1; with this function you can easily determine x if given y.) Because the number returned is 30 digits, and there’s very many more numbers more than 30 digits long, the MD5 hash function must produce collisions. This project is effectively trying to find two numbers that have the same hash value, which is not the same as being able to efficiently find x given y.) 05:01
http://www.fakeisthenewreal.org/subway/ Been on: Singapore, New York, Paris, Moscow, London, Washington D.C., Barcelona, St Petersburg! (Not listed: Boston, Bilbao, Shanghai, Prague.) 20:57
http://slate.msn.com/id/2096026/ Artificially created cities (i.e. cities built recently, to be capitals). 06:17
http://slate.msn.com/id/2096043/ Are you a member of an Indian Tribe? (System seems dehumanising, reductive, silly.) 05:46
http://slate.msn.com/id/2096338/ Somewhat cheeky article on Schwartzenegger, civil disobedience, gay marriage, and Cuban cigars. 05:46
http://www.swindonweb.com/life/lifemagi0.htm Insanity: five linked roundabouts make up Swindon’s “Magic Roundabout.” 04:38