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Monday, January 31 2005

Judging Personality by Face; Changing Those Judgements?

Mind Hacks author Alex Fradera on how people (often accurately) perceive personality traits based on a person's face; and constructing faces based on the traits you want perceived:

"Activity affects physiology, so in principle personality, by affecting your activities, could affect how you look. And how you look may shape your personality. So is there anything to this? A kernel of truth, a whole lot of truth, or no truth to speak of?"

Friday, January 28 2005

Kung Fu Hustle

Best movie preview of the year. (So there are 11 months to go...)

Tuesday, January 18 2005

Boxer's Got Balls

When Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio objected to counting the electoral votes from Ohio due to the voting shenanigans there, Senator Barbara Boxer joined her. Want to let her know that you appreciate the political risk she took in highlighting Ohio's voting problems? You can thank her (and Senator Harry Reid) through a MoveOn form letter, or just contact her through her own website.
Salon.com characterizes the objection as futile; others see the objection as an important gesture.
Want Boxer to keep showing backbone? She's gathering signatures in support of her plans to grill Condoleeza Rice on the mess the Bush administration has made of Iraq.
(Want the Conyers report on the voting problems in Ohio? Here you go.)

Saturday, January 15 2005

Cool (daily) photoblogs

From Matt Haughey, creator of MetaFilter: Ten Years of My Life. He's trying to post at least one photograph to the web every day for ten years (started - October 10, 2003). The photograph to the left is from the photoblog, and is released under a Creative Commons license.
Also: Genevieve Shiffrar's photoblog.
Also: A Photo a Day. Collaborative photoblog, from a collection (collective?) of working photojournalists and photography students.

Monday, January 10 2005

Jared Diamond: Collapse

Salon.com interviews Jared Diamond, celebrated author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, on his new book, Collapse, and how societies do (and don't) avoid collapse:

"The two traditional American values that I think... have to be discarded are, first, unbridled consumerism resulting from our sense of being in a land of unlimited resources.
"And the other long-held American value is the value derived from the United States' relative isolation... Now, even desperately poor countries like Afghanistan and Iraq can raise absolute hell with our economy -- as well as killing a few thousand people in the process... We have to engage with the rest of the world -- not in order to be charitable to them but for our own self-interest. It's much cheaper to put a few tens of billions of dollars into world programs for public health and environment than to throw $150 billion into Iraq and $100 billion into Afghanistan..."

Wednesday, January 5 2005

New Year's Eve, San Francisco Style

As always, mvgals.net has pictures from many of the club-style parties this past weekend. Here, here, here, here, and here.

Happening in the Senate This Week

Hearings on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General of the United States. A number of high-level ex-military folks are unhappy with him:

"The letter signed by the retired officers, compiled by the group Human Rights First and sent to the committee's leadership last night, criticizes Gonzales for his role in reviewing and approving a series of memorandums arguing, among other things, that the United States could lawfully ignore portions of the Geneva Conventions and that some forms of torture "may be justified" in the war on terror. 'Today, it is clear that these operations have fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world,' the officers wrote..."

"I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law."

Tuesday, January 4 2005

Shared online refrigerator magnets

They're only virtual fridge magnets, but - try it out. You and dozens of other people manipulate a shared set of letters on the screen; spelling words, forming patterns, torpedoing each others' attempts at cleverness...
(Scroll down for an alternate list of fridges; the 15-person one seems to generally be less frenetic.)

More Tsunami Stuff

Evelyn Rodriguez dishes a bit more on her feelings and thoughts regarding being in the tsunami in the Phi Phi Islands.

"I finally gave in to my own heart cracking open on Tuesday morning when I returned to the provincial hall in Phuket. I let the meaning of the board really sink in. That's the large bulletin board where friends and family members had tacked on photos of their loved ones and also the board that authorities had stapled morgue shots of people needing identification. Nothing has been the same since."

"You don't need an international consortium to build such a local tsunami warning system. You don't even need broadband. The data is available, processing power is abundant and cheap. With local effort, there is no reason why every populated beach on earth can't have a practical tsunami warning system up and running a month from now."

"MoveOn members have raised over $2.6 million for Oxfam America's work in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India. By giving, you became part of a worldwide groundswell that compelled governments to increase their giving -- resulting in a record total $2 billion pledged. Thanks for your immense generosity."

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...