Lovely seaturtles

Sea Turtles
Originally uploaded by sindy

My friend Marina finally finished the lovely piece of artwork shown here in my own little private dining room exhibit. The photos don’t do it justice, especially since I’m using my simple point-and-shoot DiMage and I couldn’t get the lighting to quite work out the way it should. Nevertheless, to take a closer look, check out the closeups of the whole piece, the left-hand panel and the right-hand panel.

Individual-i

This is pretty cool. If you’re interested in protecting individual rights– specifically, privacy and anonymity in the information age– check it out:

Individual-i

Penmanship

I used to have great handwriting. It was always neat and easy to read. If there was one thing I never had to worry about during school, it was whether or not teachers could read my handwriting. It’s changed over the years, from bubbly and cute when I was younger to elegant, feminine script when I was older. When I was in college, it was still neat, but slightly stylized, artsy even sometimes.

I was also pretty good at changing handwriting styles at the drop of a hat too– which made me pretty good at forging. And if you flipped through a notebook from my high school days, you could see the various handwriting styles I had adopted and tried out over the year.

Now, I barely write anything with a pen, outside of writing on a whiteboard (where I can still write neatly and clearly in slightly stylized all capital letters). I sit in front of one computer or another at least eight hours a day, usually more, and I can type God-knows-how-fast for God-knows-how-long even with highly manicured long fingernails. I’ve even passed the point where I’ve either adopted better typing practices or I’ve just gotten used to the repetitive stress. I can barely remember a time when I didn’t know how to type, using correct home keys and everything, just like I can barely remember a time before computers.

And now when I do need to write something, my hand cramps up and I painfully etch out chicken scratch on post-its, legal pads, and the like. I hate taking notes by hand. I don’t even like using a stylus– I prefer to type everything out, including on my Blackberry. The only thing I can still do effortlessly is sign my name.

This is our future.

The RIAA and Internet2

Okay, well, I realize I can’t really let this little news item pass without commenting on it:

RIAA cracks down on Internet2 file swapping

There are a lot of obvious comments I could make about this new witchhunt by the RIAA, most of which have already been said by many other people. Nevertheless, I might as well reiterate a few important points:

Internet2 is a “closed” network. The RIAA declined to answer how they were able to get onto the network to discover the alleged copyright infringement in the first place. I hope this will finally push someone to seriously challenge the questionable way the RIAA (and now the MPAA as well) is monitoring these networks. Unless they have people working on the inside (which is not completely out of the realm of possibility), there is some seriously sketchy network “monitoring” going on.

Targeting I2. It’s pretty clear why the RIAA is targeting I2– because it’s considered a closed and centrally-controlled network, it is more regulable and can be used to set a precedent for regulating similar special networks. (Again, if it’s so closed and regulable, it begs the question, how did the RIAA get on there in the first place?) Check out Ed Felten’s comments on the subject.

Liability. Obviously, when asked to comment, the folks behind the i2hub community have stated that they do not condone activities that breach the rights of copyright owners. Well, I’m assuming that they’re not so naive to think that this wasn’t going to cause problems, especially since they so clearly identify themselves on their Web site (where they also say that this whole project is under the umbrella of “collaboration” between students). While universities come down harder and harder on p2p on their campuses for fear of being sued, there hasn’t been a case yet where the ISP (the university) has been sued. However, the entertainment industry first went after those running file-sharing services on campuses back in 2003 and has not hesitated to go after Grokster, Kazaa, and, most recently, BitTorrent tracker sites, so there’s little evidence that they would not go after the i2hub folks. I will assume that the i2hub folks aren’t stupid, so they should have been expecting something like this to happen eventually. If that’s the case, I hope they’re also willing to stand up and fight.

Digital music services. A number of the schools at which students were sued have university-wide deals in place for legal music services for their students (e.g., Napster, CDigix, Ruckus, etc.) I had thought that making a deal with the devil might offer those universities some comfort, but I guess not. This also shows that the amount of illegal file-sharing does not necessarily go down significantly just because you have legal services available. Both of these points don’t give universities much incentive to make campus deals.

In any case, we’ll see what happens. The RIAA sued no more than 25 students at each of the 18 schools (this statistic somehow meant to make us feel better since they claim to have evidence of many more cases of infringement). I sincerely hope that at least one of those students will fight back, will file a countersuit, will do something to stand up to the entertainment industry’s targeting of college students and universities in general. Maybe then they can get back to actually providing entertainment rather than punishing their customers and we can get back to the business of educating students.

Yahoo! Yahoo! 360!

So, through the invitation of a friend who is also a heavy social networking service user (or at least member of many), I am now on Yahoo! 360 (Beta) in addition to many other social networking sites. I think my main motivation in joining these sites is that basically, in a nerdy way, I like filling out forms (it feels like completing a test really fast and knowing all the answers) and I just get sucked in by others joining these sites. Part of me also likes the idea that maybe somebody from elementary school will find me on one of these things if I list every single place I’ve lived and every single school I’ve attended (including kindergarten in the “round building”). Of course, part of me is also slightly concerned that as cosmic punishment for offering up my data to all these sites without thoroughly researching their security and what they do with my data, I am going to be the victim of identity theft or stalking (cyber and/or real).

All that aside, after fiddling with Yahoo! 360 for all of ten minutes, it looks pretty feature rich to me (although they also don’t let you just point to your own RSS feed instead of using their blogging tool– they say it’s “coming soon”) and offers some nice privacy settings support that provides some comfort and peace of mind. Also, it’s got way better/cleaner/more professional design and since it’s not even one month old, it doesn’t seem to have the sketchiness that has become MySpace. Although I’m not sure that’s a good or bad thing. I would almost want to suggest that my friends get onto 360 as a less sketchy and more professional looking alternative to MySpace, but I don’t think that either of those things would appeal to most of my friends. They, like most people, like MySpace (and the net in general) to be where they can be a little dirty, a little less professional, and free to create some of the most difficult to read, annoying to load, multmedia rich content-filled Web pages to serve as their presence on the World Wide Web. And that, my friends, is called serendipity.

Whiteboard Zen

Public Whiteboard in Meyer Library (Stanford)
Originally uploaded by sindy

This whiteboard sits on the first floor of one of our undergraduate libraries and serves mainly to separate the “Teamspace” from the rest of the first floor lobby area. Usually unused, some students (or one industrious student with too much time on his hands) decided to decorate. But alas, all good things must come to an end. (Check out the close-up.)

When did MySpace become so dirty?

Take a trip back and remember the clubland that was on the rise in NYC during the eighties and early nineties. Remember? They made a book, a documentary and then a movie about it with Seth Green and MacAulay Culkin and everything (Party Monster). All three pieces of media focused on the life of Michael Alig and his club kids and specifically, the murder of Angel Melendez that seemed to end it all. Now, while Angel’s death is certainly tragic and the effort to cover up the grotesque act is disturbing, I find the whole Clubland culture much more fascinating in general when it comes time to look back in history. Those crazy days of Clubland started off with some “innocent” fun– a bunch of kids dressing up in outrageous costumes and going to the clubs to become famous for being famous. There were substances, of course: alcohol, pot, ecstasy and even Special K, but soon Clubland was filled to the brim with every hard drug out there, young people were addicted and out of control and in the end, Clubland had become this weird, sleazy place with kids– some actually kids, some older trying to act like kids– reveling in some sick sex clown esthetic.

This is what it feels like sometimes on MySpace.

I signed up for a MySpace account a while ago because a friend of mine from high school said I should sign up. Now, I was already on Friendster, Orkut, and inCircle (the Stanford Alumni networking site that was the predecessor to Orkut). And since joining MySpace, I’ve also joined LinkedIn. It never stops and it’s sad really because I never do anything with those accounts after setting them up. Maybe I’ll put a new picture up once in a while when I get a good one, but that’s about it. Most of the time I usually end up using the system to reconnect with old friends. By putting myself out there on as many social networking sites I can, I hope that those I might have lost in touch with for whatever reason might be able to find me (and those I purposely lost touch with can see that I’m doing pretty well for myself). And this has been the case on most of these sites.

But who knew that MySpace would be the place I would reconnect with the most friends from high school and the like? And who knew MySpace with its janky site design (do you hear the circus music?) would beat out its more professional predecessors? Maybe it’s because MySpace, with its Tapioca Express color scheme and breadth of services (even though quantity not quality seems to be the rule here) hit it big when attracting young people to a place where they can easily put together an online profile, develop their own Web presence and use it to do a whole variety of things, from making new friends, reconnecting with old friends, tell each other about what’s going on in their lives, etc. Of course, the biggest thing that has happened is the downright naughtiness that has sprung up and taken over. Browse through the profiles and you’ll see a lot of photos of underage girls willing to show just about anything and equally clad guys just as eager to say anything.

Case in point: when I’m on these networking sites, I usually limit my interactions to those I know in real life and use the service as a way to come together in one virtual space to send notes to each other, let us know what’s going on in each others lives, maybe even introduce mutual friends, etc. It serves as a compliment to my social life in the real world. But now, on MySpace, aside from getting in touch with some old friends I haven’t talked to in almost 10 years, I also get the random messages asking for friendship/answer to a question or just plain out fucking. See, you take away most of the barriers to visibility, access and opportunity and we all just break down to the lowest common demonominator: sex.

Some examples of messages I have received:

Hello there. I ran across your profile on myspace and I think that you are very attractive. Check out my profile to see what you think of me and if you like what you see, you can email me at [...] or message me on Yahoo ([...] is my screen name). I hope to hear from you soon.

Which is not that bad. It’s actually very nice. But here’s another one:

i’m checking my heart beats. think i’m missing one—omg…since i’m writing you personally i dont mind saying… you look fucking hot!! i would love to do you some “bad” things;)
anyway i’m not much of a writer but can talk (with an accent though;))
so if you feel comfortable gimme a call sometime. you are invited for milk and cookies;)

Does this work? Do these lines make women drop their panties and just want to fuck? I don’t know. It just seems like to me that no matter how attractive he might think I am, how could he really tell with the picture I have up there? It’s just a head shot and probably one of the more tame pictures out there compared to the naughty naughty stuff 15 and 16 year olds will put up there. Maybe I just have a look about me that invites trouble.

Now, facilitation of more risque (or at least “taboo”) and random sexual experiences has been a tried and true use of the Internet. However, for the most part, when people go on the net looking for “anonymous” sex, they usually try to stay just that: anonymous. They use pseudonyms and screennames, lie about their personal lives (spouses and the like), put up fake photos of themselves. And while people have certainly become more open about using the Internet for these kinds of interactions (just check out the casual encounters section on craigslist), I don’t know if they’re necessarily willing to divulge their identities so openly. But on MySpace, with the exception of the occasional fake celebrity profile, people seem surprisingly willing to a) divulge real and true information about themselves and b) be frank and open about their search for sex. Maybe it’s the simplicity of MySpace that invites a group of people that may be considered less “net savvy” (just take a look at some of the crap people put on their profile pages), but who they are, branch out to reconnect with old friends, and yet still reinvent themselves into something bigger and better and look for a way to meet new people and have new experiences…

Dignity

It’s strange that Terry Schiavo and Pope John Paul II’s last days are so close together with the Catholic church so often at the forefront of the battle against euthanasia, with the Pope having his own feeding tube inserted in those last days. There are a lot of things I could say about the issues surrounding the Schiavo case– how it’s interesting that we are so quick to perform all life-promoting, life-saving and life-sustaining measures, but we’re always so afraid of facilitating death even a little bit, even if it may be the most humane choice. Even with millions of orphaned children out there in the world, we’ll pump women full of fertility drugs and implant test tube babies, but when she ends up becoming pregnant with eight babies, none of whom will most likely survive to full term, no one is willing to abort any of the embryos, babies, or whatever you would prefer to call them. They say that that they’re leaving it nature, to “God’s plan.” Well, if you had left it to nature, you wouldn’t have been able to have children at all. Situational ethics don’t always make sense.

The religious community is always at the forefront of these battles against euthanasia, but shouldn’t they be the least afraid of death? That after having lived a good life, after having exhausted what medical technology has to offer, after having hoped for a miracle, when it’s clear that it’s the end, shouldn’t those in the religious community be the most ready to face death, to move on to the next life, the better life? I know that I have been experiencing somewhat of a crisis of faith since high school, but I still believe in God, a God that is kind and merciful and wants to do good things and make the right choices when we can. And I always find it hard to believe that if God has given us so much human ingenuity, talent, intellect and even opportunity to do some of the great things medicine can do to save lives, why wouldn’t he give us the power to ease suffering and facilitate death when necessary?

To be honest, for me, if I’m in a persistent vegitative state for an extremely long period of time, especially if the only thing I can feel is pain, please just let me go because I can’t imagine wanting to be kept alive on a respirator or with a feeding tube for 15, 20 years, silently waiting for the next infection, the next stroke, for my bones to deteriorate, my muscles to atrophy. Let’s say Terry Schiavo really did have basic thoughts and emotions– what would they be? Was she glad that they went all the way to Congress with the fight to keep her alive? Or was she pained by constantly having her sickly image shown broadcast, non-stop, all over television and the Internet? Or was she pained by having to watch her parents struggle and mourn her condition day in and day out? Was she wishing her parents would let her go in peace and if not an afterlife, at least relief from this life?

There are a lot of people who want to give definitive answers to these questions, but to be honest, I don’t really know either. I know what I would want to happen if it were me and I’ll take the necessary steps to make sure my wishes will be known and followed. What other people choose to do is their choice and each unto him and although the law is clear, I don’t know any better than the next person whether Michael Schiavo or the Schindlers were in the right. My only issue with everything is how we have made such a circus out of the suffering of this poor woman. That Congress convenes to vote over the fate of one women who has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years while more and more American lives are being lost overseas is unbelievable to me. And even in her death, she is granted little peace or dignity as the feud continues over her cremation, her autopsy, and her funeral.

And while the Pope was not kept alive for over a decade through medical devices, certainly we could have done more to give him some dignity in his last days? As local news broadcasts gave regular updates on the Pope’s health, just skimming the surface of being called “Pope Watch,” I kept wondering why we seem to revel in his suffering. I’m not saying we enjoyed his suffering, that we wanted his suffering, but what is wrong with us that we peer in with such a twisted, morbid curiosity, like watching a car accident on the side of the road? Despite all of the Catholic Church’s problems, no one can deny the great works the Pope and the Church have been able to do. They go places no one wants to go and they do work that no one else wants to do. So, why couldn’t we give him some respect during his last days, to die in more peace and more dignity than we did? What did we think we would accomplish by watching his every failing breath? The greatest tribute we could have given the Pope would have been to follow his humanitarian example and devote even a portion of our days to helping the suffering of others. We fixate on the suffering of the famous, whether celebrity or religious or political leader, but we fail to acknowledge the suffering of the millions around the world who we can help if only we were to look at them with the same interest. Perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from having watched Terry Schiavo and the Pope’s last days broadcast on television, day in and day out, is that while they may not have been able to be helped during their last days, maybe there are others we could help and the greatest tribute to the sanctity of human life is to value our own days here as an opportunity to make the most of them by devoting them to promoting life and the quality of life for those in need.