I just discovered that Facebook has a breast controversy.

According to several news sources, the social networking site deletes photos of women if they are breastfeeding… or is it that their babies are breastfeeding?  Okay, I’m a bit confused on the verbiage, but Facebook is not confused about the Terms of Use.  If you have a Facebook account, you agreed to the Terms of Use, which includes the provision that “photos containing a fully exposed breast” are subject to removal from the site.  No caveat for when the breast is being employed in a mammary fashion versus the Girls Gone Wild display that was certainly the impetus for the rule in the first place.  And thus, controversy.

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Tags: on the law, technophoria
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It won’t be long now before the post-apocalyptic future, as shown in the Terminator movies, comes to pass.

Famed technologist Ray Kurzwell is predicting that machines will have evolved enough to match man’s cognitive abilites in just another 20 years. I think he is being overly optimistic about the time we have left, based on the launch of our Overlord’s surveillance construct, iSentry.

The successful test of a hovering anti-missile device called, aptly enough, the Multiple Kill Vehicle, is just the latest nail in the coffin that is our mastery of this planet.

Combine the iSentry and an MKV with the Israeli’s new offensive robot, and you have a wonderful tool with which to control the masses!

Sure, call me a nutcase, but I swear my toaster has been acting mighty uppity.

Tags: black helicopter watch, technophoria
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Like a lot of Americans, I was glued to the television on Tuesday night. I flipped from network to network evaluating the coverage, ripping apart the guests, and loving the graphics — which were just insane and over the top… but fantastic. It was great that, for a moment, Brian Williams had his director drop out the graphics so viewers could see the green screen Ann Curry was walking on. Those designers certainly deserve a round of applause.

But, by far, the most outrageous bit of new news technology came from CNN with their hologram import of guests and correspondents. Slate V remixes Wolf Blitzer’s debut encounter with this technology into an encounter with Princess Leia. It had me laughing out loud.

Personally, I think I would have rather seen these images sharp and clear on any one of the many HD TVs they had all around the set, but I have to admit, part of me liked it.  Did you think the graphics were cool… or just unnecessary and distracting?

Tags: technophoria, trusted media
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For those of us who see politics as something other than a game of capture the red/blue flag, presidential debates become fairly tedious affairs right about the time voters begin winnowing out marginal candidates — you know, the ones who bum focus groups out with things like “facts” and “the truth.” Whatever your politics, however, thanks to the creators of PALINdrome this year’s vice-presidential debate can be different. Tonight, have it your way. Whenever Gwen Ifill finally cuts off whatever delusion of grandeur Joe Biden is caught up in, hit the mute button and create your own response out of a series of phrases Sarah Palin culled from either the perfect RNC speech or the opposite-of-perfect Katie Couric interview. (My actual advice for Palin is up at Culture 11.) If you’re a Republican, you can help Palin bring the pain to Biden like he was some innocent furry Alaskan woodland creature. If you’re a Democrat…well, you could do worse than a verbatim transcript of the Couric interview, but feel free to get more creative if you like.     

I just finished my own practice run, torturing my wife as she readied herself for work with a hitherto undelivered Palin speech that included the lines “It is obvious I desire Henry Kissinger, he is my New York love Holocaust — I think that’s the word — I want to has him inside my backpack, because I think I am beyond bad” (Oh yeah, naughty girl!);  ”I have a message for you: Styrofoam is evil, John McCain is the haberdasher of war”; and “The difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick. The difference between al-Qaeda and special needs children? Guns.” 

Any better ideas? Please share. 

Tags: rulers & ruled, technophoria
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Spinspotter allows readers to “see, share and edit the spin” in the news. It seems like it works the same way as sharing and listing sites such as Digg. I haven’t used the service. If you have, let us know what you think of it. Also, see the Seven Deadly Spins.

Hat tip, Amy Boshnack.

Tags: technophoria, trusted media
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These cell phone companies are going to be in for some trouble one day when someone doesn’t receive a voice mail message on time. Can you imagine waking up one day to receive some big, potentially life changing news, only to realize that the news is a few days old?  Depending on the circumstances, things could get messy.

Here’s a harmless example of that. I had off this past Thursday, so I called my mother to see if she would let me hang out at her place for a bit. A few hours passed and I didn’t hear from her, so I decided to just drive home anyway to beat traffic and hope things would be ok. As I was driving by my apartment building searching for a place to park, I saw my mother walking in, so I knew all was well. When I got upstairs, mom told me that she had just left me a voice mail saying that it was, indeed, ok for me to visit. She left me that message around 4 PM on Thursday… I received it around 11 PM on Saturday.

To my knowledge, my mother doesn’t have any special powers that would allow her to manipulate the AT&T network, so I’m chalking it up to the company’s error. Think about it though — down the road, someone could miss out on important, time sensitive information like an illness in their family or a potential job interview. It sounds like a recipe for a lawsuit to me.

Tags: technophoria
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My wife made a comment the other day that stuck in my head. She said, “I can’t watch the news anymore. I used to turn the TV on first thing in the morning and catch up on what went on overnight. Now I just can’t stand it! I refuse to watch any of it anymore, it just gets me too upset.” [Read more →]

Tags: technophoria, trusted media
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I spent most of last week traveling to attend a biker get-together. Nothing unusual in that, except that this group, and by extension the meet itself, was the product of relationships developed online.

The hours I spent on the road gave me, as it always does, a lot of time to ponder my belly button. The topic that got the most mileage was the changing nature of friendships in my life. [Read more →]

Tags: technophoria
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This afternoon I went to the Bucks County Historical Society to do some genealogy research for a writing project I’m working on. When I called the BCHS yesterday to find out their hours I was excited to find out that it’s housed not just in Doylestown, which I knew, but right inside the Mercer Museum.

The Mercer Museum, if you’ve never been to it, is awesome. It’s a feat of Victorian geekery. At the turn of the 20th century crackpot collector Henry Mercer had the idea to compile as many handmade (not machine-made) objects as he could since, as he saw it, these things were on their way out. He assembled his huge collection inside a cement castle (!), with all the various objects of old-school interest divided into separate little warrens that wind around the perimeter of the building and up to the top. There’s tin smithing, whaling, the healing arts; on the top-most level is a gallows. Yikes. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, technophoria
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I am a librarian’s daughter. My sister and I were raised between the stacks. Our mother left it up to us to either be bored or learn to read. We read. My sister was inclined toward smut. But the trashy romance genre was not for me; I was enthralled by non-fiction. History — real people, real events.

Most of the information that I have stored over the years has become disjointed and most was always completely useless to anyone else. But sometimes it amazes me the little jewels I have retained. I’m not bragging. It is a disease. I am obsessive about needing all the facts. Something will pique my interest and I feel obligated to exhaust every resource.

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Tags: books & writing, technophoria
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