The Ingenues, an all-girl vaudeville band, serenading the cows in the University of Wisconsin Dairy Barn in a scientific test of whether the cows would give more milk to the soothing strains of music. Via the Wisconsin Historical Society’s photostream.
* Last night I managed to keep my attention span in one place long enough to read the nine page article on microfame over at New York Magazine. I giggled and sputtered when I read the title “Prairie Ho Companion”, but felt that the piece was more of a guesstimate-of-a-how-to about what I’m calling “flash” celebrity: people who aren’t famous for anything lasting, noticed only for being noticed. That’s the context missing from the piece. I think that microcelebrity is actually something quite different, and it would have been nice to see that distinction as well.
* Don’t miss this excellent post by Ariel Waldman about privacy and security. It’s less focused on users and consumers than networks, but the topics affect everyone and there’s a lot of good food for thought. Plus, Bruce Schneier is on the panel she discusses, and I love his blog.
* It was brought to my attention this weekend that every Boing Boing post (except one) with my name in it is gone. It might have happened a while ago, and no, I have no idea what’s going on. How do you even ask someone about something like that? Personally, I never delete posts for any reason so I just think it’s really weird.
* Best article title: Congress pats itself on back as it caves on telecom immunity. It’s a great article, too.
* Comcast’s screwing of heavy bandwidth users is being spun in the lamest way possible in the press. To wit: Online bandwidth hogs to be cut off at trough? Because using more bandwidth — for whatever reasons, video, podcasting, torrents — means you’re “extreme” or greedy. This kind of spin in the issue is to me, reminiscent of sex-negative journalists writing about the Kink.com Armory purchase. The judgmental attitude is needless when all I want is the information.
* I loved this Laughing Squid guest post by my old, dear friend mikl-em and you will too: Consumer Reports’ Vintage Test Photos.
Update: My notice of being erased by Boing Boing has been noticed. It was blogged by Valleywag, put on Digg and posted about here, among others. Seems to me like it’s a lot of work to erase over 100 posts, and I’ve never heard of a blog (especially a big blog) ever doing something like this. Especially quietly and with no comment. I think it’s weird. Something tells me it won’t be “boingboinged”.
Update 2: We’re all still awaiting news that Boing Boing’s servers got eaten by termites. Until then, the podcast with me in it has been erased, and here’s another stinging post about what it all means.
Update 3: Follow-up post, still no answers.
Update 4: More to read about blogosphere reaction to the Boing Boing deletion, most especially the post William Gibson Completely Deleted from BoingBoing Archives (also seen @ worship the glitch).
