Post about what you want. It’s all about the love. Self-love (of the linking kind) is especially welcome.
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This is a “Tweenbot,’ an art project. According to tweenbot’s creator:
“Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.
“The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged.”
Neat! Curtsy: Brad at WendyMcElroy.com.
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Also, via Boing Boing: “Danish photographer Peter Funch stakes New York City street corners out for two weeks at a time, taking pictures of passersby from the very same spot. He then uses Photoshop to composite the results into single images.” Very neat stuff.
I wonder how related the cuteness of the bot (and it sure is cute!) and the help it received are?
After a hiatus of sorts, I’m back at it :D and I’m mostly angry :D
Nothing annoys me like blatant, willful ignorance.
My own takedown of the Amazon debacle and the subsequent reactions, excuses and why this event matters.
I am not a fan of Seth Rogan or his “same shit, different generation” style of film-making.
Why do people flip the fuck out when I talk about rape?
Who is held responsible for the actions of the privileged? I’ll give you a hint, its not the ones who actually acted.
I lit my candle for Angie, in the hope that I can be better at ending the attitudes that lead to death and discrimination of transpeople.
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It’s cute, but not so big, sensitive or unpredictable as a living person…so some of us might find it easier to help it. Me, I’d prefer it w/o a humanoid face on it. Besides, some of us find it easier to spare a second’s effort than a dime these days.
That’s good to hear about. Thanks!
Angry letter I sent to the Washington Post:
I was dismayed, after the recent controversies regarding the Post’s failure to check its regular opinion columnists’ work for factual errors, to see that a similar slackness applies to guest op-eds. Christina Hoff Sommers, despite having established a niche for herself as an expert on the pernicious effects of gender equality on education, doesn’t even know what the foundational law in that area, Title IX, actually says. According to Sommers’s editorial, Title IX is “the law that requires universities to give equal funding to men’s and women’s athletics.”
On the contrary, Title IX actually says, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” There is no mention in Title IX of athletics at all.
This basic mistake undercuts Sommers’s entire argument, which is premised on the idea that President Obama is illegitimately importing the sex equality in college athletics that Title IX requires, into areas like science education where Title IX never has applied. On the contrary, Title IX always has applied to any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, which includes most university laboratories.
Had Sommers bothered to check the statute she discusses — or even read the Wikipedia article about it — she could have made a much sounder argument about how the Department of Education’s regulatory interpretations of the statute have straitjacketed universities with regard to athletics, and that such interpretations should not be expanded to other programs and activities. Instead, she has misled Post readers about what Title IX says.
Nice letter PG!
I’m going to have to agree that the Tweenbot sure is damn cute.
I haven’t been blogging very much, but I have written about the whole AmazonFAIL debacle.
I also wrote about “the storm” that is coming, taking away our rights as we know them when it comes to marriage and the “rainbow coalition” fighting to take back the meaning of marriage—The National Organization for Marriage is using hate speech and scare tactics to brainwash people into thinking that inequality is a good thing; not too big of a surprise.
And today I posted about Scarlett Johansson’s frustration with tabloid media and their love of profiting off of people’s poor self-body image. Again, not too big of a surprise.
I wrote a little on Norm Stamper and Samuel Walker’s take on “Driving While Female”. I think I’m going to work more on that and then I wandered off to address the latest attack on the police commission and whether or not it’s related to rumors coming out that police personnel are being misused.
The “Filthy Five” as a group of four women and one man have been called online by workers for one councilman’s political campaign will be meeting for a group photo! We all know each other anyway.
I wonder and have asked why it’s women who are often targeted for this type of attack. Women who speak out certainly are vulnerable in having comments written about breasts, bras “undergarments” (which I guess is all inclusive of bras and underwear) and other things.
I can’t wait until the stupid election is over.
I wanted to comment mostly just to say that I love the Tweenbot; thank you posting about it! For some reason, that story and the video on the artist’s website brightened an otherwise fair-to-middling day. However, since I’m here, I might as well share some links! I posted an interview with Jennifer Kesler of The Hathor Legacy and one of the other contributors just posted an update on the Angie Zapata hate-crime murder trial, which is happening in her (and my) very near vicinity…
Rod Blagojevich is in talks to star in a reality show. People are kind and helpful to disgraced former governors?
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Women who speak out certainly are vulnerable in having comments written about breasts, bras “undergarments” (which I guess is all inclusive of bras and underwear) and other things.
Radfem, it seems to me that people who speak out in general are vulnerable to having comments written about their weight, appearance, accent, etc., etc. I agree that women are more often targeted than men in such cases. But I just want to point out that the phenomenon is not limited to that.
One example would be http://www.inchatatime.blogspot.com, a blog run by Susan Russell, a female lesbian priest of the Episcopal Church who is nationally known for speaking out against what she perceives as discrimination against homosexuals. She has repeatedly made posts whose focus is the weight and other aspects of physical appearance of some of the more notable supporters of viewpoints opposing hers, using both text and pictures that in the latter case are often deliberately selected to put the subject in their most unflattering light. My comments that this does not exactly put her on the side of the angels have been ignored.
So I was on jury duty in Cook County, Illinois yesterday. All the way downtown in the Daley Center (the current Mayor’s father) in the heart of Chicago and across the street from the Federal building where at the very same time ex-Gov. Blagojevich was entering his “Not Guilty” plea and preening at the center of an absolute clusterf**k of a media circus. Interesting day. I ended up being sent to a courtroom to be questioned, along with 40 other registered voters and holders of Illinois driver’s licenses, as to our fitness to sit on a jury for a given case.
The racial, ethnic and income distribution of the panel was far different than what I encounter in my daily life. I’d say that about 20% of the panel was black, about 15% was Hispanic, and about 90% make less money than I do. I sat next to a West Indian immigrant with a back problem. A Russian immigrant asked to be excused on the basis that his English wasn’t good enough. A union steward asked to be excused on the basis that the group of people he represented were about to go out on strike. A free-lance designer would miss an appointment in Indianapolis with a prospective client. A worker with 3 small kids wouldn’t be able to take care of his kids when his wife was working. Surprisingly to me, a lawyer who was in-house counsel for a pharmaceutical business defending them against product liability suits was not immediately excused on that basis.
They broke us down into groups of 12 to ask detailed questions, and I was in the first group. The judge had us tell her where we lived, how long we had lived at that address, whether we were married or not, how many kids we had, our employment history, our health history, etc., etc. I was one of 2 college graduates in the group. Three were unemployed. Person after person told a story of going to high school and then either going directly into a blue-collar job or dropping out of college after a year and getting a blue-collar job, and then describing children who are doing the same. They also tended to change their addresses and employers more than I have.
Then it was my turn. I’m reciting “lived at my current address for 23 years, wife is employed, BS in Biology from MIT, MS in Biochemistry, at my present employer for > 10 years, do computer network analysis for a living, one child with a BS in Electrical Engineering, another graduating next month with a BS in Mechanical Engineering” at which point someone waiting to be empaneled for questioning next said “Jesus!” – a definite no-no to talk in court, but no one said anything. People were staring at me.
It was a medical malpractice suit. As further questions were asked I kept sticking my hand up. I worked at a company that ran two hospitals and a medical school for years. I worked for a major medical device manufacturer for years. I have a close relative that is CEO of a hospital. I’ve been treated at the medical center that was among the defendants.
I think the kicker was when one of the lawyers asked if the fact that one of the doctors among the defendants had also graduated from MIT would influence my ability to be objective. I maintained throughout the entire questioning process that none of these things would keep me from being objective. When the questioning of our group of 12 was finished all 40 of us left the courtroom for a break while the lawyers and the judge decided which of us would be seated. One of the women yet to be questioned looked at me and announced “You’re going home early!” She was right – I was excused.
There are things in my history that could be taken as likely to bias me either towards the defendants or towards the plantiffs (the parents of a small child who had died). I thought that was all a wash. I’m thinking I was rejected because they want you to judge the facts based purely on what you hear in the courtroom, and my background means that my judgement would likely be affected by my understanding of how hospitals and doctors work as well.
When I told people at work that I was going for jury duty, people started to give me advice on how to get out of it. I wasn’t interested. It seems to me that the justice system is not going to work right if people seek to avoid doing their duty towards it. If you’re going to complain about how the judicial system works don’t try to get out of being involved when the State tells you it’s your turn in the barrel. I showed up on time, answered every question I was asked truthfully and repeatedly told them that I could be objective. Maybe in a trial that had nothing to do with medical malpractice I’d have been seated.
I don’t know about Chicago, but if they excluded lawyers from juries in New York they’d have an even harder time filling the seats than they already do. I got called last year right before Thanksgiving, and decided to gamble that they wouldn’t want to start a trial before the holiday. It worked out rather nicely, as they have free wireless at the courthouse now and also were doing Juror Appreciation Week, sending us at lunch to see various “celebrity jurors” like Katie Couric, Uma Thurman and Nathan Lane talk about the importance of jury duty. I spent two half-days at the courthouse and now I’m free for the next three years.
Do people really get called for jury duty that often? I mean, I am 40 yeras old and have only been called once, 18 years ago. Many people I know who are also 40 have never been called. Maybe there are more court cases in big cities like Chicago and NYC so there is a greater need for jurors?
Factors particular to big cities: corporations suing each other and a population with many people who aren’t eligible for jury service because of non-citizen or felon status. Factors that affect some unexpected places: plaintiff-friendly reputation.
It seems to me that jury duty somehow is not distributed evenly. I’m two years older than my brother, so I have two more years as a registered voter. I’ve been called once, but I was out of the country at the time, so was excused. My brother has been called four times. Now, we live in different states, so it’s not apples to apples, but even in our current location, my husband’s been called twice and I’ve never been called.
It’s like how your iPod shuffle claims to be totally random, but you know it plays some songs all the time and some songs almost never.
(Cross-posted with PG. In our case, we both lived in big cities, but different ones in different states.)
Cook County has a one-day system. They send out a mailing based on voter and driver’s licenses lists. If you no longer live at the address you’re going to miss the call. Some people are directly called, and some people (like me this time) get put on standby. I was directed to call after 4:30 the day before to see if I had to go down. “All persons whose last names begin with B through G …”, so RonF had to go. You go down, get assigned a panel number, and sit and wait. If a judge needs a jury and your panel number is called, you go like I did and get processed. If you don’t get called, or if you get called and rejected (like me), that’s it; they can’t call you for a year.
I went years without a call and then got called 3 times in 5 years. Once I was called directly, sat there all day and never got processed. Once I was on standby and it was “All last names between M and R”.
There are a lot of people who get off because they have small children to take care of, or jobs that they can’t miss a day of (especially professionals like doctors and lawyers), people who have non-refundable plane tickets for either business or vacation, they are students who don’t live at home most of the year (my son got off on this basis last year), etc., etc.
The judge said something interesting; she claimed that the U.S. is the only country in the world that empanels juries for civil suits. Can anyone contradict that?
RonF,
Pretty sure that’s correct with regard to our being the only people with a constitutional right to a jury for all federal civil trials. Japan is just now getting juries for *criminal* trials. Canada doesn’t have them, which I didn’t realize until a couple years ago when I worked with a McGill law student who didn’t know that America does have civil juries, which she thought was crazy (she was working on a products liability case and was skeptical that 12 average citizens would understand the science).
However, according to Wikipedia, Britain guarantees a jury for certain civil matters such as Fraud, Libel, Slander, Malicious prosecution and False imprisonment.
A petition has been started to “Just say no to United Airlines policy to charge two seats for fat passengers ”
at http://www.petitiononline.com/cgi-bin/petition_html.cgi?NoUNITED
For all those inclined… please sign.