College professor and performance artist Stelarc has been talking about performing an experiment for years, namely, finding a plastic surgeon who would fabricate for him a third ear out of his own flesh. The problem, he said when I spoke to him about it a number of years ago, was finding a plastic surgeon who would have no trouble designing and implanting the prosthesis, when in fact plastic surgeons make all sorts of modifications to people every day, such as increasing and decreasing the sizes of breasts.
About four years ago, a retired professor emeritus from the University of Pittsburgh named Bernhardt Lieberman was doing research on the hacker subculture. He interviewed a number of people in Pittsburgh (myself included at the time), and in 2004 attended the HOPE conference to interview another group of attendees about their lives, practices, education, and interests (computers and hacking aside).
I kept in touch with Bernhardt up until I left Pittsburgh in 2005, at which time I didn't have a net.connection for a couple of months. Life being what it is, I didn't actually get around to contacting him …
The guys over at the Hacker Foundation have put together a jaunt for globetrotting hackers that will be hard to pass up, a project that they're calling Hackers On A Plane. Through much wheeling and dealing, they've cut deals with the organizers of Defcon in Las Vegas and the Chaos Computer Camp in Germany, and they've made it possible to attend both. Here's how:
For $1,337us (or €1,337eur), you can attend Defcon in Vegas (though you'll have to pay for your own food and sleeping space), fly from Vegas to Frankfurt, Germany, catch a charter flight to the …
Rainbow kites. On the National Mall. Nothing "in your face", but if we can get enough people involved, it'll get noticed.
We've created a community for this. It's called gbltkite.
Due to the somewhat sensitive nature, it's going to be moderated for now. If you're interested, join up!
If you have a Livejournal, I highly recommend that all LGBT folk and allies in the DC metroplex give it a look, and consider helping us out. You don't necessarily have to be queer to join in - if you care, you're welcome.
The theme of our annual Samhain party was simple: Comic books: DC vs. Marvel. DC comics, sparing no expense, sent some of its heavy hitters from their Vertigo imprint to represent, vis a vis Papa Midnight from Hellblazer and King Mob from the Invisibles. Marvel called in the services of Rorschach from Watchmen.
Panasonic really did buy ad space on the seat-back trays of at least one US Air passenger jet. In this case, they're advertising their latest generation of Toughbook notebook computers.
I don't know about anyone else, but this is going to make the 'good' kids angry that they aren't trusted, and the 'bad' kids are going to get even more crafty.
