fascinating
August 28th, 2001This is fascinating: The Bride, Off Duty. A woman dressed as a bride goes about the business of daily life alone, such as pumping gas, buying groceries, eating at a diner. A confidant watches and records the reactions of passersby. The results provide an interesting glimpse into the meaning of bridal finery and the symbolism of being a bride (warning: this site should probably not be viewed by anyone with an upcoming wedding on their schedules).
The wedding dress partly represents the wearer’s adherence to societal norms, exhibiting a desire to make continuing connections over time between families and within cultural traditions. It is expected that the bride will always be seen with and among those that she belongs to as well as with those whom she is connecting. But here is a visual investigation or proposition of The Bride as Loner, the antithesis of she-who-joins-together, she-who-belongs. To some, that made this solitary bride seem funny; to others, invisible; and to some, it made her suspect. Dressed for a moment of connection, she is here alone and doing what is necessary to provide for her individual, daily, ordinary, perhaps unconnected life.
Link via Girl Hacker.
Dave, you are wrong. In a well-written and well-intentioned essay, he argues that women are limited somehow and haven’t contibuted to programming yet.
But software comes from men with few exceptions. And I’m not saying anything should change there, there may be a reason why men’s minds are better suited to creating complex and dark caves and patiently retrying connections. Evolution created us differently from women.
Women have had a significant and important role in programming. In fact, women were the very first programmers. Subsequent developments cannot be attributed to innate abilities or evolutionary preferences. They are due to institutional sexism that guides women and men to make some decisions more often than others. That sexism may not be linked to specific individuals, but it is sexism nonetheless and should be changed.
Nifty redesign Steve. Someone suggested to me once that Mac users always put their sidebars on the right, while PC users always put theirs on the left, since that is the way their computers are set up. Hmmm….
I stumbled upon this Iron Chef USA page the other day. If you scroll down to the middle of the page, you’ll see a picture of the set, with William Shatner as the chairman. I think my fears have been realized — they spent too much money on the set, diminishing the program’s cheese factor and making it simply bad. I’ll have to wait until November when the two specials are aired to make sure though.
I have to order a new birth certificate for myself because I somehow managed to lose mine. I found this website that is packed with information about ordering birth, death, divorce and marriage certificates. I thought I’d pass it along in case someone else might find it useful.I will admit that I do not understand birth certificates. Since the certificate is the basis of all other forms of identification, including social security cards, drivers’ licenses, and passports, I would like to think that you somehow have to prove that you are YOU in order to get your hands on your birth certificate. But you don’t. You can just write and request it, usually paying a small fee. It seems that this would open the door to all kinds of chicanery, including identity theft, fraud and fake IDs. Maybe the powers that be are banking on most chicanerous types being too short-sighted to plan ahead far enough to obtain an alternative birth certificate. Or maybe there is no efficient, cost-effective way to secure identity. Either way, thinking about my birth certificate too hard makes my head hurt.
