private hompege

Open Wander and Diary Rescue

Diaries up for rescue tonight:

• PaulVA´s A Trade Clause That Suppresses the Common Good looks at a little-known swop clause in NAFTA that allows individual multi-nationals to sue governments for monetary damages if their regulations disallow their corporal practices.
• judasdisney´s How Mass-Murderers "Take Responsibility" reflects on the death of Pinochet and the language that authoritarians use to shift accountability for their atrocities.
• Conceptual Guerilla´s None Dare Call It Imperialism explores the connection between rock-ribbed Iraq war supporters and "cheap labor conservatives" - and discovers they´re often one and the same.
• davefromqueens´ Celebrating Democratic Diversity in Congress provides some interesting statistics on the party breakdown of Congress by religion and ethnic group.
• sandlapper´s Howie Rich´s ´06 capture undergoing renovations follows the rehabilitation of Howard Rich´s character and success capture in the right-wing press.
• cowgirl´s Single Parents looks at the voting patterns, demographics and issues of singles and single parents.
• dhonig´s Pawning an Entire State provides a dispatch from the state of Indiana on all the privatization schemes being considered and endorsed by Governor Mitch Daniels.
• Land of Enchantment´s House NATURAL Resources Returns looks at the agenda and personnel of the incoming House Natural Resources Committee.
• zcaron´s The U.N. Nitty Gritty: Report Back from the United Nations Climate Change Conference provides an interesting first-hand account of attendance at the UN Climate Change Conference, from a member of a contingent of Canadian youth.
• RichardR´s A Second Protestant Reformation? draws intriguing parallels between the current upheaval in Protestant churches over gay rights and Martin Luther´s original reformation.

Cronesense brings Top Comments of the Day.

Add your favorites from the past 24 hours and use as an open thread.

open threaddiary rescue [SHOW]

Muttering Hats

I´ve blogged some pretty wild thingies to grace your head in the past: sensational hats made of human hair, a pair of mutant ears that amplifies and augments ordinary audios; FlirtBunnies that send flirty signals of love to each former even when they are apart; reach out hats that partake textile patterns or audio (music) when populate wearing them are in airless proximity with each other; super flattering Robotic Ears, etc. But nothing had prepared me for Kate Hartman´s Muttering Hats (i might audio sarcastic but i love her idea.)

The project considers internal mutterings - indistinct and intertwined thoughts that get trapped within your own head. So often we get caught up in thought, walking around accompanied by the audiotrack of our own musings. (...) Slivers of these unspoken utterances may slip out through facial expressions, body language, or references made in conversation, but for the most part they remain contained, internal, unexposed.

A system made of hacked MP3 players, headphones, speakers, plastic funnels and other elements are used to draw the mutterings out of the head and expose it to the world. According to Hartman, it might audio like this.

The Muttering Hats take on two forms based on models of thought processes that we engage in with ourselves:

1. The Voices in Your Head Hat: a pair of muttering balls are tethered to the hat. They may be stuck to your ears, so that all other noise is obstructed by the mutterings, or they may be detached, providing the opportunity to escape from the mutterings or to partake them with a friend.

2. The Talking to Yourself Hat: Through the use of a communication system embedded in the hat, you may speak outloud to yourself while retaining the right to a somewhat private conversation.

Video.

The hats will be available to be worn at the upcoming ITP Winter show, on December 17 and 18, 721 Broadway at Waverly Place 4th Floor South Elevators, New York.

wearable [SHOW]

School Teaching Kids How To Use Fountain Pens; Do They Teach Math With An Abacus Too?
Now I´m as big a fan of the fountain pen as the next guy, but I´m not exactly convinced that it´s critical to teach our school kids how to use one. However, it appears not everyone agrees. Following just a few months after the hand-wringing from some adults that the kids of today are doomed for being better at using computers than being able to publish cursive, comes the news of a individual school in Scotland that has decided that teaching kids how to publish with fountain pens is of extreme importance. Apparently, fountain pens (not other types of pens) advance the kids´ self-esteem and improve their academic performance. It´s not at all clear how they go about proving this, other than a couple of random anecdotes, but the school is absolutely positive that fountain pens are the key to a child´s success. Not to knock the importance of decent handwriting, but if the purpose of school is to prepare kids for the world they´re going to enter as adults, I would think that how to use a fountain pen would be pretty far down the list of marketable skills. Then again, this other article points out how business schools feel they need to teach students to be better publishrs, as they tend to send stuff out without proofreading (or thinking) when they type it up on a computer. [SHOW]

Equity Firms in Talks to Buy Saber Holdings
Saber Holdings, the move reservation accompany is in advanced talks to be sold to a consortium of individual equity firms for more than $4 billion. [SHOW]