| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Today%27s_featured_article/July_25%2C_2008 William Gibson (born 1948) is an American- Canadian writer who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. In 1982, Gibson coined the term " cyberspace" and popularized the concept in his debut novel, '' Neuromancer''. Gibson is best known for depicting a visualised, worldwide communications network before it became ubiquitous in the 1990s, and he is credited with anticipating and establishing the conceptual foundations of the Internet and the World Wide Web in particular. Gibson's early works are bleak, noir near-future stories about the effect of cybernetics and computer networks on humans – "lowlife meets high tech". Gibson is one of the most highly acclaimed North American science fiction writers, feted by '' The Guardian'' in 1999 as "probably the most important novelist of the past two decades". To date, Gibson has written more than twenty short stories, nine critically acclaimed novels (one in collaboration), a nonfiction artist's book, and has contributed articles to several major publications and collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers and musicians. His thought has been cited as an influence on science fiction authors, academia, cyberculture, and technology. ( more...)</div> Recently featured: Exmoor – SS ''Christopher Columbus'' – '' The Power of Nightmares'' | |
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| Tonight--no, not yet, but eventually tonight--there will be another Shadow Unit over-hiatus DVD extra. (I did a word count on the over-hiatus DVD extras, by the way. 16,000 words, more or less. Another novella. Heh.) This may be my favorite DVD extra ever. Hard to choose. But this may be it. | |
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| More new prints up at her Etsy store:
 
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) | |
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| http://voluptuary.org/jennifer/2008/07/24/mmm-pudding/ I didn’t produce many words today, but I still feel all wrung out. I’ve registered with Guru.com and with Elance.com I did the free ones, because until I earn some money, I can’t afford the paid ones. I really want the paid ones, they would be quite useful. Er, I mean useful as in, would allow [...] | |
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| If you don't already know about the comics, film & gaming news website, THE COMIC COLLECTIVE, now's a great time to check it out since they've just added the video interview I did with TCC's Bradley Hatfield during this year's New York Comicon. Brad and I talked about my current ACT-I-VATE comic, LOVIATHAN. Click HERE to see the video. | |
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(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) | |
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| If you want to work for elance.com, click this: And I'll get some money. Yay, money! | |
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| Originally published at Jennifers' Head. You can comment here or there. I didn’t produce many words today, but I still feel all wrung out.
I’ve registered with Guru.com and with Elance.com I did the free ones, because until I earn some money, I can’t afford the paid ones. I really want the paid ones, they would be quite useful. Er, I mean useful as in, would allow me to bid on many more projects.
I need to write a few articles and get them onto Constant Content and Associated Content. Not only will AC pay me for them, upfront, but they’ll provide me with examples for my other work. Y’know, for the profiles. I have to show people what I’m capable of.
Hey, if you’re going to sign up with Elance, check out the link over to the right there. If you sign up, I could get money for it. And that would be coolness.
My brain feels like tapioca. I think I need food, and then I need to start writing.
Coming soon, an article on the feral cat problem, one on body language in sales situations, and something on advertisements on blogs.
But first, I want pudding.
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| http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/07/misdirected_magic.html  Just one more on the magic. I just got this email from Mind Hacks readers Stefano suggesting that stage magicians that use psychological language actually pollute the public's understanding of science. He also gives a much better, and, I'm guessing, more accurate explanation of the hand-raising trick in Keith Barry's TED performance.
As a psychologist, I have to say I dislike the new sort of mentalism that we're seeing nowadays. Derren Brown (an incredibly talented performer, as you said) tries to portray his show as something more than old-fashioned magic by introducing psychological terms and studies, somewhat erratically. I understand that his use of scientific terminology might be part of the misdirection, but it really makes me cringe to see he perform ridiculous feats and justify it by citing things like the Milgram study, concentration abilities or persuasion techniques. Almost every time he mentions a psychological concept, he either misrepresents it or uses it to explain absurd stuff that he did with stooges or simply old magic tricks.
I didn't know Keith Barry, but I have to say his TED lecture made me put him on the same category as Derren Brown: old mentalist tricks disguised as "persuasion and psychological techniques". He even managed to fool you, it seems: the trick that you attributed to hypnosis has nothing to do with it, being achieved simply by the performer applying pressure on the feet of the subject instead of his hand. Notice how he never says where the pressure will be, and his left leg is covered by the table. His other live tricks are equally simple, and have nothing do with psychology, except for the fact that everything you do to an audience - even cheating/fooling them - is part of it.
Stefano makes an interesting point that these acts rely, in part, on misinforming people about psychology. Derren Brown is a classic example where he often gives explanations after the trick so the viewer feels they are being let in on the secret, but which are obviously misleading and so are part of the more general misdirection that the feats are achieved through the 'power of the mind'.
In terms of the hand raising trick that Stefano mentions, looking back at the video, this seems a much more likely explanation. In which case, this is a 'theory of mind' illusion, where we are fooled into attributing a different mental state to the person picked from the audience than they actually have.
I hope you don't mind me publishing part of your email Stefano, I did try and email and ask but unfortunately the address wasn't valid. Do get in touch if you have a website or blog and I'll happily link to it and many thanks for your interesting commentary. | |
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| I have yet to be trouted, though.
I just met ExemplarySalmon.
Very cool kat. - Mood:cheerful
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| I told this to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) matociquala, who said I needed to post it. Two horses live here at Endicott West. They don't belong to us; their owners rent the corral and storage space in the barn. So we have the pleasure of looking at them with none of the responsibilities. I call them the Scenic Horses. Sometimes the owners of the Scenic Horses go out of town, and ask us to take care of the equines. Like a fond aunt, I get to tend them and give them back at the end of the week: a perfect arrangement. The owners are on vacation, so Will and I have horse care duties. This involves feeding them their hay, cleaning the corral, refilling their water, spraying them with the (completely useless) fly spray, and, on Monday, pruning the branches of the mesquites and the cactus that are located where horses could hurt themselves on them. I did all the feeding, watering, and cleaning. Then I pruned much mesquite...and realized I should have brought in the wheelbarrow to haul it out of the corral. The horses were much involved in eating, so I dashed off and fetched back the wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow that, um, usually arrives with hay in it. Jester came to the gate looking hopeful. "You've already got it," I told him. "It's not my fault you eat the alfalfa first and only have grass hay left." "Hay?" said Jester. "No. And back up, because you're standing in front of the gate." "Empty. No hay." He drooped and went back to his hay. I trundled the barrow across the corral to halfway between the two piles of branches...and turned to find Jester sniffing at one pile of incredibly! thorny! dangerous! mesquite. "No. You'll scatter it, get a thorn in your foot, and be lame, lame, lame." "Eat this?" "No." I loaded the pile in the wheelbarrow. "In wheelbarrow! Not empty! Eat this!" "What part of 'no?'" "In wheelbarrow!" I trundled over to the other pile. I was followed. I was tripping over an enormous horse. "Eat this now?" "No! It's the same stuff it was when it was ten feet further back! Go eat your hay!" So he beats me to the other pile of mesquite branches, which are dry and dead and, if possible, even more thorny. I now know it's possible to look disapproving and interested at the same time. "Not eat this. Toy?" "What are you, a cat? Go eat your breakfast!" I got the second pile loaded and headed for the gate. Where I had to wrestle with the wheelbarrow, the gate latch, and The Giant Hoofed Cat, who was determined to follow the wheelbarrow out the gate. Because "In wheelbarrow! Not done smelling!" Coty continued to eat hay throughout this production. Humans = boring. | |
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| So, Dr Horrible, then. Unless you were offline during the month of July 2008, you heard about DR HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG: a musical comedy film produced for the internet by Joss Whedon, a man who has yet to be properly punished for once calling me his "youngling." Written by Joss, his brothers Zack (who co-wrote a pleasing episode of DEADWOOD) and Jed and Maurissa Tancharoen. A musical comedy, in fact, about a small-time mad scientist supervillain, the superhero he hates, and the Tess Trueheart drawn between them.
I only watched the end of it, because, as much as I love Joss, I hate musicals. Musical comedy makes my balls itch, frankly. And no-one wants that. It’s one of the things Joss and I will never agree on (like, you know, my being his youngling. Which I am not. At all). I think Gilbert & Sullivan are a cultural curiosity at best and I like ALL THAT JAZZ because Roy Scheider dies at the end. Joss believes that Gilbert & Sullivan are culturally relevant (and presumably still washes his clothes in a stream and goes on ether frolics) and is friendly with Stephen Sondheim.
But it was a lovely little production. Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion are always watchable, and some of the non-musical gags were inspired. (I actually later went back to the earlier episodes for the Bad Horse stunts.) And, clearly, it was forty-five minutes that delighted a great many people.
(Not interested in the fanwank about the ending, nor in Dr Steel losing his shit, so don’t even think about bringing me any of that. You’ll go right into the spam filter.)
Most interesting to me, though, are the guts of the idea. Joss Whedon blowing his savings account on staging a 45-minute serial for the internet (that will doubtless prove to be i2dvd — internet to dvd — apologies once again to Bill Cunningham for perverting his "d2dvd" coinage).
I was crapping away here the other day about the ratio of linkblogs to people actually
producing original content. And then Joss blows a couple hundred grand on not only producing a bit of original content with unusually high production values, but also an Internet Event. It was free to view if you attended within a stated time window. It was in fact Appointment Internet. That is not something that many people have ever managed.
And while there are elements of the project that only someone of Joss’ position could pull off — the money, the cast, the values, etc etc etc — I think there are still lessons to be taken from it that apply broadly. Not least of which are, Be Short, Be Bold, and Get It Done.
I can’t tell you how many new hopeful comics writers I meet who have never finished anything in their lives because their intended first project is a hundred-episode epic that creates a whole new universe or three. And I tell them all the same thing: you’re screwed. No-one will want it. Not until you’ve written something short, capable
of being produced on a budget, and finished. Your epic may be worldchanging, but no-one will ever know because no publisher will gamble that kind of money on an unknown. And that’s before you get to the vagaries of the attention economy.
Production values are nice, but not necessary to producing compelling work. People gave Dr Horrible 15 mins because it’s Joss, but five minutes is a great length for net video. 500 words, 5 pages, whatever. Be short. Be great.
And if you can get an evil horse in there, that’d be good, too.
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) | |
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| http://fleshbot.com/5028017/evil-angel-shows-you-the-difference-between-slutty-and-sluttier--not-much  Imported French sex machine and part-time gynecologist Manuel Ferrara may hold only a tenuous grasp of the English language—we could barely understand a word of his grateful acceptance speech at last year's AVN Awards. But that hasn’t stopped legions of Freedom Fry-eating smut fans from admiring his oeuvre. After all, even the most rabidly patriotic among us have to admire the folks who invented the ménage a trois.
While we're generally not fans of the word "slut" here at Fleshbot Central, we will say that Ferrara's definition of the term does bring it to new levels of decadence and refinement in his "Slutty & Sluttier" series, the seventh installment of which stars Lucy Belle, Valentina Blue, Milka Manson, Jasmine Black, and Artemis Gold along with a fond look back at Mia Rose, Aurora Snow, and Sandra Romain.  In "Slutty & Sluttier 7", gammy beauty Lucy Belle joins Ferrara and a friend at a coffee shop for some public pussy teasing and exhibitionism before being spirited away to a private residence and treated to some world-class ass fucking. Later, pale and raven-tressed Milka experiments with a lollipop in a yeast-defying act of rebellion on a public train. Then Jasmine Black takes on two men at once before the copper coiffed Valentina Blue gets her turn to ski slalom; all are awarded the appropriately for their exertions. But despite watching this several times, we stillc an't tell who's "sluttier" and who is merely "slutty". Maybe they use those terms differently Over There.
The 2-disc set also features bonus scenes from the original "Slutty & Sluttier" including Aurora Snow and Sandra Romain taking on an ample helping of bifteck, along with Mia Rose's epic original anal ravaging from Manuel. It drops this week, but you can sneak an exclusive preview here if you’ve got an open mind for foreign culture and like to try new things. • "Slutty & Sluttier 7" (evilangel.com)
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| http://fleshbot.com/5028735/sexploitation-clip-of-the-week-hot-erotic-dreams  This week's clip forgoes the standard formula involving an outraged narrator warning you to avert your eyes from (and also definitely go and watch) a sordid tale of sex fiends throwing their lives away for the sake of cheap thrills. In fact, it doesn't even pretend that there's a story to be told at all. This trailer simply levels with you: you want to see crazy swingers having sex under a background of smooth jazz, and that's exactly what you're going to get. It's refreshing, even if that kind of honestly isn't nearly as .... shocking!
· "Hot Erotic Dreams" (1967) (imdb.com)
· Clip courtesy of Bedazzled Blue (bedazzledblue.com)
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| http://fleshbot.com/5028711/2009-nude-calendars-are-like-christmas-in-july  Hey kids, it's almost August ... and you know what that means! Time start thinking about the hot nude calendars you're going to be hanging on your bedroom wall in 2009! Naturally, we turn to the European calendar fanatics at Areaticino who have already everything you need to know about this "Luci's Angels" 12-month spread, even though it's in Italian and makes no sense to us (though you shouldn't have any problem whatsoever understanding the hotness of models Lisa Dalla Via and Marianne Puglia). So what if it's six months early? If this is what we have to look forward to next year, January can't come soon enough.
· LUCI's ANGELS calendario 2009 di Lucignolo (Areaticino)
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| http://fleshbot.com/5028661/catwoman-porn-helps-you-make-it-through-the-dark-knight  The Most Important Movie To Be Released This Or Any Other Summer came out to near unanimous praise last week, but it did have one fatal flaw: it chose to have two horribly disfigured men as the villains instead of, say, a sexy female seductress dressed in a skin-tight catsuit. That's a pretty boneheaded move by the producers if you ask us. But even we didn't realize the missed potential until we saw this post on High on Sex about Catwoman porn. Maybe these babes don't measure up to Eartha Kitt's naughty purring, but they are certainly nastier and harder to tame. How many of the nine sequels, er ... lives does the franchise have left?
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| http://fleshbot.com/5028751/  So, like, we have gone on at some point about how the combination of digital cameras and mirrors is the greatest gift to amateur porn fans since ... well, ever, haven't we? No? Well, we promise to whip up something eloquent as soon as we finish persuing this Flickr gallery of purloined photos wherein a couple dozen random guys add an assortment of cellphones, abs, and body hair removal treatments to that heady mix. Oh, and some vanilla wafers too. Mmm, vanilla wafers. (flickr.com, via tinynibbles.com)
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| http://fleshbot.com/5028585/fleshbot-reader-challenge-we-have-a-weiner  If you haven't been paying attention around here (and why not?), we mentioned last week that although we were impressed with the content of Raging Stallion's recently released "The 4th Floor", we thought the title was sort of irrelevant. So we asked you to rename it with some 007 flair—which is also pretty irrelevant, except it's a perfect tie-in for that "For Your Eyes Only"-style cover. Well the polls have closed, we've tallied the results, and the winner is ....
... Hughman, with his sexy and appropriate "Licensed To Drill" title. (Among many, many others. Hey, we never said only one entry per customer or anything.) Congrats Hughman—we'll send details about your complimentary 100-minute romp in the Fleshbot Video-On-Demand Theatre directly to your Fleshbot user account! (Note: We'd love to give a special shout-out to Fauxjob for his entry "Quality of a Solid Ass Fit Hairy Thighs Only If Looks Could Kill James in Chicago". If we thought it could fit on one marquee, you'd have totally won!) (And yes, we did use an awful pun like "weiner" in the headline for this post. Maybe for the next contest we'll ask you to come up with a better one.)
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| http://anthropology.net/2008/07/24/why-there-is-such-a-high-percentage-of-amerindian-mtdna-and-european-y-chromosome-signatures-in-the-caribbean/ http://anthropologynet.wordpress.com/?p=1054 I have family living in the Caribbean, they specifically reside on the island of Grenada. And I regularly go down to visit them. Given that the many islands in Caribbean functioned as pit stops for the slave trade, I’ve been curious about the demographics, history, and genetics of Grenada. Based off of cursory observations, the majority of the population is of African decent — but there are people from Europe, India, the Middle East and East Asia living there as well. I’ve seen very few mix, marry and reproduce. Instead, most choose to live in their respective groups.
 An illustration of a Carib Indian family by John Gabriel Stedman Prior to European contact in 1498 by Christopher Columbus, Grenada was inhabited by Carib and Arawak peoples, both originating from Central/South America. The Arawak preceded the Caribs. It is believed they first occupied the Caribbean islands somewhere around 100-200 A.D. The Caribs came around much later — about 100 to 150 years before Columbus. They were very hostile compared to the Arawak and killed many Arawak. Those who were spared were enslaved. The Caribs also prevented settlement of Grenada by Europeans for 150 or so years.
The English tried and failed in 1609. The French first gave it a shot in 1638 and biffed it. It was not until 1650 that another French attempt, this time from a nearby island, Martinique, established a premanent presence in Grenada. Not surprisingly, the Carib did not welcome the French colony. They launched a series of battles and lost. They were determined not to submit to French rule and ultimately the last surviving Caribs jumped to their death off a precipice in the north of the island.
Some of the other islands in the Caribbean, like Puerto Rico and Cuba, share a similar history. A primary population, of Arawaks/Taínos displaced by another indigenous population — ultimately to be eradicated by European contact and pathogens. One would suspect that there was not much admixture because of the rapid mortality.
Today, Dienekes shared a paper investigating the genetic diversity of modern Cuba — an island that originally had Arawak people, then Ciboney people, and ultimately African and European slaves and colonists. There are some pretty surprising results.
The paper, “Genetic origin, admixture, and asymmetry in maternal and paternal human lineages in Cuba,” is published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. The authors of the paper sequenced and analyzed the HSV I and 5 SNPs in the mitochondrial genome of 245 Cuban individuals. They also seuqenced and analyzed 40 SNPs on the Y-Chromosome of of 132 Cuban males. Their results indicate that the,
“Native American contribution to present-day Cubans accounted for 33% of the maternal lineages, whereas Africa and Eurasia contributed 45% and 22% of the lineages, respectively. This Native American substrate in Cuba cannot be traced back to a single origin within the American continent, as previously suggested by ancient DNA analyses. Strikingly, no Native American lineages were found for the Y-chromosome, for which the Eurasian and African contributions were around 80% and 20%, respectively.”
Razib thinks that the the high percentage of Native American footprint in the modern day Cuban mitochondrial gene pool is because admixture occurred very early on. Makes sense, early European conquistadors and colonists host inhabited Cuban were most likely straight males interested in the triumph of new land, riches, and flesh.
But, does this genetic analysis of Cubuan populations have any tangents to other Caribbean islands? Razib linked up another paper, published in American Journal of Physical Anthropology, which investigated Puerto Rican mitochondrial diversity. The authors of the paper, “Reconstructing the population history of Puerto Rico by means of mtDNA phylogeographic analysis,” sequenced and analyzed only the mitochondrial genome of 800 individuals. They were able to fish out that 61.3% of Puerto Rican mtDNA comes from Amerindian. Sub-Saharan African and West Eurasian mitochondrial signatures were found in much less degrees, 27.2% and 11.5% respectively.
Both studies show that on these two islands, there is a substantial mitochondrial contribution from indigenous pre-Columbian populations in modern day populations. Dienekes suggests that the reason why there isn’t a substantial Y-chromosome contribution is that Y chromosome diversity within an already settled territory was wiped out, citing that, “new pathogens or a technological differential between colonists and natives,” are two possibilities.
I disagree with the first half of his statement, new pathogens are for the most part indiscriminate of sex. Technological differences, however, could have manifested in less indigenouns males, especially after battles. That, coupled with the accounts of rape and pillage by European settlers, it seems like a more understandable reason to why we see such high Amerindian mitochondrial and European Y-chromosone signatures.
Mendizabal, I., Sandoval, K., Berniell-Lee, G., Calafell, F., Salas, A., Martinez-Fuentes, A., Comas, D. (2008). Genetic origin, admixture, and asymmetry in maternal and paternal human lineages in Cuba. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 8(1), 213. DOI: 10.1186/1471-2148-8-213
MartÃnez-Cruzado, J.C., Toro-Labrador, G., Viera-Vera, J., Rivera-Vega, M.Y., Startek, J., Latorre-Esteves, M., Román-Colón, A., Rivera-Torres, R., Navarro-Millán, I.Y., Gómez-Sánchez, E., Caro-González, H.Y., Valencia-Rivera, P. (2005). Reconstructing the population history of Puerto Rico by means of mtDNA phylogeographic analysis. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 128(1), 131-155. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20108
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(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) | |
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Professional naked lady photographer Richard Kern turns his attention to the lovely Armida, who 
If you've been keeping up around here over the years you might think you're already familiar with everything there is to know about our favorite man with a pussy (and all-around mensch) 
A lot has changed since Shauna Sand first appeared in Playboy twelve years ago: there was that whole acting career, the marriage to Lorenzo Lamas, and a few 