mysterbey

• Tools to Spiff Up Your LJ Browsing Experience. And Part 2
• Signs you might not be from LJ originally. 
• The Compleat (sic) Guide to LiveJournal Stardome And Fame. (a few years old now).
  

"I believe the Bible's the word of God but Muslims have greater belief in the Koran than Christians have in the Bible".

"If it does get approved, every ragger that walks up the street is going to get smashed up the arse by about 30 Aussies".

Several pig heads were left at the site of the proposed school late last month, including one placed above an Australian flag.

• We'll Climb That Bridge When We Come To It. Unfortunately, I got halfway through this Financial Times article on urban exploration, when it suddenly became 'subscriber-only'. "When everything has already been explored, here's a chance to open a manhole and climb into a world you don't always see".
  

• One World, One Market: How Advertising Breaks Down Cultures. An article from Adbusters on how marketing crosses the boundaries of national and ethnic identities. "The language of advertising is universal, and it speaks to everyone who has been singled out as potential consumers".

• The Globe, Politically Corrected. On the difference between Mumbai and Bombay, Sri Lanka and Ceylon, Myanmar and Burma, Kampuchea and Cambodia, Suomi and Finland, and so on.

• A World of Insults: Mind the Gaffe. What may seem innocent in one culture may be offensive in another. "Blowing you nose into a handkerchief in Japan: The Japanese call snot hanakuso - literally "nose shit" - and find the idea of walking around with a cloth full of it disgusting".
  

• 25 English Language Oddities. From the excellent List Universe blog, a collection of word trivia. "Soupspoons is the longest word that consists entirely of letters from the second half of alphabet".

• Double-Tongued Dictionary. "A lexicon of fringe English, focusing on slang, jargon, and new words".

• Fighting Yesterday's Battles. Ruth Lea suggests that since the late '60s, feminism has been successful in liberating women from the submissive social roles they once inhabited. Along with economic equality, today's women also enjoy freedom from cultural representations containing "implicit assumptions of female inferiority, subservience and stupidity". As such, Lea argues that beauty contests have become innocuous. Interestingly, Lea points to the "sheer wackiness" of typical contestants as being proof of the harmless fun that beauty contests have become. Yet it's surely this kind of smug ridicule that contains the inherent sexism of beauty contests, reinforcing the myth that such women are good to look at, but nothing more.

• Miss World Deserves Our Ridicule. This is a companion article to the one above. Beatrix Campbell argues against the notion that "feminism is a thing of the past, ergo sexism is a thing of the past". To Campbell, beauty contests are an obsolete cultural relic. I particularly like this passage which touches on the way traditional sexism has been recast as 'cheeky' retro-fun:

  "...kitsch is a weapon in the propaganda value of retro-sexism, it flourishes in a frame of period style, and the style implies that it is a knowing design: this is sexism with an alibi. It throws the pageant into an another era – before feminism came along and spoiled the fun. Kitsch is the key to its transcendence – it slithers between eras, between pre and post-feminism. It invites the thought that feminism never happened".

  I find it interesting that Ruth Lea draws on L.P. Hartley's succinct adage "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there" in order to explain how far women have come in the last four decades. I've always taken this adage to mean that, in order to 'understand' the past, we must reframe our assumptions, we must exercise a little historio-cultural relativism. To my mind, this adage is more in fitting with Beatrix Campbell's argument, in that it explains how social rituals, such as beauty contests, can become irrelevant and redundant over time.

• Blame Women for the Death of Feminism. Karen Murphy in The Age yesterday, takes the pessimistic view that feminism is dead, and lists the women who have killed it; prostitutes, porn stars, pole-dancers, strippers, women who wear stilettos and get Brazilian waxes, etc.
  
  I think the truth lies somewhere between Campbell's and Murphy's arguments. Feminism does still have a place in modern western society, and probably will do for some time. But it should be fluid and malleable, and it should change as the battle changes. It's challenge is to navigate the space between sexuality and sexualisation, and perhaps admit that the boundaries are different for each person.
  

• Argentina: Ugly People Strike Back. Somewhat related to all of the above. Gonzalo Otalora is an ugly man in a city of beautiful people. He's proud to be ugly, and has started a campaign to tax good-looking people to compensate for their social advantage over less attractive folk.
  
  

• Facebook Grooming Us for Intrusive Marketing? Amy Tiemann on Facebook's increasingly invasive marketing tactics.
  

  You remember the old story about the frog placed in a pot of water that was slowly heated up, until it was cooked? When I read the about Facebook's reaction to the anti-Beacon protests, my first impression is that Facebook's concessions are essentially along the lines of, "OK, we turned up the heat a bit too much on this one, so we'll turn it back down a little bit--for now." Are marketers counting on the fact that we'll get used to the warm bath, then the hot tub, calibrating their fine-tuned ability to stop just short of the lobster pot?
  

  I have to admit, I find Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg quite creepy.

• Ad Targeting Improves as Web Sites Track Consumer Habits. A broader view of 'behavioral targeting' in internet marketing, which also touches on the idea of web-users becoming acclimatised to increasingly intrusive forms of marketing. Makes you wonder what SUP has up its sleeve!

• Friending, Ancient or Otherwise. An interesting article that looks at Walter Ong's notion of 'secondary orality' with respect to social-networking (perhaps this is up your alley little_nay ). Comparisons are made with traditional oral cultures in Papua New Guinea, and the arbitrary nature of the term 'friend' is touched on. Cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch makes an interesting point:
  

  But there’s also this fundamental distance. That distance makes it safe for people to connect through weak ties where they can have the appearance of a connection because it’s safe.

  I find this intriguing based on a couple of personal experiences; a) On Facebook and Myspace I am 'friends' with quite a few ex-students from work, people I have gotten along with but wouldn't really count as true friends, and yet through this medium I am able to stay in touch with them without being so intrusive as to send them emails - dropping the occasional comment seems much less creepy. And b) Apart from nictoupee , I have not met any of my LJ 'friends' in real life, and yet I find LJ to be the most personally engaging and supportive of all the social-networking sites I've tried. Let's hope it stays that way with the new owners.
  

• It turns out that the winning bid for the rare Velvet Underground acetate LP ($155,401) was a prank.
• Some great photos of loungerooms of DJs.
• Collection of photos of abandoned buildings in Japan.
• Beautiful landscapes sculpted from the pages of books.
• The Unconscious Art of Demolition.
• Insect sculptures augmented with electronic components and antique watch parts.
• Ghanian film posters.
• Jesus rendered in Post-It Notes.