the I H8 Review
The place where we rag on stupidity in Politics, Entertainment, Excessive Drug-Use and Farting.
We are always critical and never-ever wrong.
We laugh at the mistakes, but makes very few.
You'll have a great time over here with us.
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Monster Slipper of the Day: Tom Boddingham is the proud owner of a brand new monster’s paw-shaped bed. One problem, though: He ordered a slipper
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I am 28 years old.
I have $50,000 in debt.
I have never made more than $18,000 a year. (And that was in 2006.)
Still, I am one of the richest men...
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I am a 55-year-old mother with a son in college on loans. Until he was born I had a “career in music” Since that industry changed, I’ve still made 4...
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Time to make a stand
I knew there was a reason I joined the major I did..and I was always worried that I’d never be able to be apart of something...
PERMANENT ERROR
For the past year Hugo has been photographing the people and landscape of an expansive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. The area, on the outskirts of a slum known as Agbogbloshie, is referred to by local inhabitants as Sodom and Gomorrah, a vivid acknowledgment of the profound inhumanity of the place. When Hugo asked the inhabitants what they called the pit where the burning takes place, they repeatedly responded: ‘For this place, we have no name’.
Their response is a reminder of the alien circumstances that are imposed on marginal communities of the world by the West’s obsession with consumption and obsolesce. This wasteland, where people and cattle live on mountains of motherboards, monitors and discarded hard drives, is far removed from the benefits accorded by the unrelenting advances of technology.
The UN Environment Program has stated that Western countries produce around 50 million tons of digital waste every year. In Europe, only 25 percent of this type of waste is collected and effectively recycled. Much of the rest is piled in containers and shipped to developing countries, supposedly to reduce the digital divide, to create jobs and help people. In reality, the inhabitants of dumps like Agbogbloshie survive largely by burning the electronic devices to extract copper and other metals out of the plastic used in their manufacture. The electronic waste contaminates rivers and lagoons with consequences that are easily imaginable. In 2008 Green Peace took samples of the burnt soil in Agbogbloshie and found high concentrations of lead, mercury, thallium, hydrogen cyanide and PVC.
Notions of time and progress are collapsed in these photographs. There are elements in the images that fast-forward us to an apocalyptic end of the world as we know it, yet the alchemy on this site and the strolling cows recall a pastoral existence that rewinds our minds to a medieval setting. The cycles of history and the lifespan of our technology are both clearly apparent in this cemetery of artifacts from the industrialised world. We are also reminded of the fragility of the information and stories that were stored in the computers which are now just black smoke and melted plastic.
It’s like a Chuck Palahniuk novel!
Every household in America needs one of these.
Here is our complete, review of Apple’s iPad w/WiFi:
Porn.
For everything else there is an iPhone.
“Hey, ya got any Ethernet ports?”
“It’d be cooler if you did, man…”
Record on a disc! from Wired ReRead, blogging ads from old issues of Wired.
I can record on a disc!
The Only Four Reasons To Use Internet Explorer
Truth be told.
8226:
Jaron Lanier’s ‘songle’ (dongle+song) concept?
Olivier Gregoire: Music Sample:
Interesting: how would you package one single mp3?
Hydrofloors
The swimming pool you can walk on and shit.
![thedailywhat:
Power-Saving Device of the Day: The “Outlet Regulator” by Rhode Island School of Design student Conor Klein forcibly disconnects itself from its power supply when the electronic device being charged reaches its energy capacity, thus avoiding needless (and costly) energy over-consumption.
Click here to see the “Outlet Regulator” in action.
[geeky-gadgets.]
That is awesome, why hasn’t someone thought of this sooner!!!](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky06paeMB11qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
Power-Saving Device of the Day: The “Outlet Regulator” by Rhode Island School of Design student Conor Klein forcibly disconnects itself from its power supply when the electronic device being charged reaches its energy capacity, thus avoiding needless (and costly) energy over-consumption.
Click here to see the “Outlet Regulator” in action.
That is awesome, why hasn’t someone thought of this sooner!!!
“The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity”
University of Kansas State Professor Michael Wesch’s lecture on the impact of “new media” on our personalities and how it’s changing us.
Most interesting (to me) are his thoughts on Postman and the idea that if you aren’t on TV you don’t exist. I don’t deny that people probably feel this way, but not everyone that goes on American Idol really feels they can actually sing, some just like being the center of attention. Doesn’t mean they feel they wouldn’t exist without American Idol or being on TV, but it’s just a bigger audience to make a fool of themselves.
I don’t think I could ever be a cultural anthropologist, because generalizations seem so premature and are usually too broad to encompass everyone. Just because some members of a community act or look a certain way does not mean the entire community look or act this way.
Understanding individualism in a debate like this is essential and I think a big failure on guys like Professor Wesch’s part is that they seem to embrace the meaning of Generation Me, but don’t recognize the contradiction they are creating.
If technology is changing everyone and everyone is an individual, technology is changing everyone in a different way. Some people still don’t have access to computers yet are still evolving their personalities in ways that are similar to those that have computers, simply because they exist in a society with computers. Focusing on the technology leaves so many unanswered questions, like what are the underlying reasons that “new media” is changing our personalities? Are we effecting the technology or is the technology really effecting us or both? Can you really say that if technology effects someone differently that a generalization about a community’s internet use and it’s impact on them can be made?
I love cultural anthropology and the idea of digital ethnography makes my ears prick up. Online forums are little cultures within a culture. Micro-culture!! That’s mine, no one else can use it…unless someone already has…(I guess they have :()
I love the idea he introduces about context collapse, which is basically a form of self-realization. My problem though was that context collapse isn’t just isolated to self-videos on Youtube, it also occurs through diaries, photographs, and listening to your own voice-messages. Shit this happens when you look in the mirror sometimes. Seeing yourself as everyone else does, or realizing that you don’t is a phenomenon, but it’s not a new one.
I think his point about this would be better illustrated through actual video blogs on YouTube, not his student produced stuff. Because, most people that are shy don’t feel comfortable enough to post videos on the internet, unless they are forced to do so (as his students were obviously completing this as an assignment, not personal pleasure which would correctly illustrate context collapse.) Only people that are secure emotionally or supported by friends record video blogs. Well, I guess whores are kind of emotionally fragile and shy, but they get off on attention so naturally their context collapsed some time ago, or else they wouldn’t be whores. See? Me either.
All in all, there were some important points made, but there are some things he really left out. The most specific thing I think Professor Wesch didn’t address was internet spam. It is the thing that people seem to experience the most on the internet, yet it’s not addressed in any of his lectures.
I’ve pointed this out on the “Anthropological Introduction to YouTube” video, more specifically about him deleting comments on the video. He actually responded back to me saying that anyone that has over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube are usually trolls and their comments are automatically deleted/moderated (as you can still see someone made a comment.)
Obviously, this does not really promote a complete understanding of the impact of the internet on our personalities. He stated that he does not believe that this is censorship because it’s spam. My question is who gets to pick and choose what is important and what’s not important? I compared this to an archaeologist finding an artifact in situ then throwing it out into the dirt pile because it doesn’t fit with his view of the culture. Dismissing a piece of evidence in a scientific investigation renders your findings meaningless regardless of how true it might actually be, because you left something out. In this case, spam is one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle of how the internet (and YouTube) is really effecting our lives.
I, for one, have not used the internet or certain websites because of spam. Spam is actually disrupting the forward movement of the technological effects on our personalities by prescribing an economic value to our attention. When there is one or two things on a screen its easy to pay attention, flood that screen with thousands of unrelated pictures, items and logos and all you have is a colorful, incomprehensible mess. People don’t want to use something like that, it seems tainted or corrupt somehow.
Sure, technology is shaping our personalities and is possibly even pushing us in a different direction societally, but we (as individuals) are the method and means of change. At least, it seems that’s how it should be. But perhaps Professor Wesch is right, perhaps we don’t have any sort of control over what this technology is doing to us. But that surely changes his Huxley theory. Perhaps we don’t live in a Brave New World, but a Slightly Timid and Pensive New World. Although, it’s a New World nonetheless.
So basically my question is this, does the phenomenon of unsolicited advertisement on the internet effect your personality (as Professor Wesch claims YouTube has done)? Does any of this even matter?
Meh. Whatever. LOL.
Miami, Florida (CNN) — A former Florida high school student who was suspended by her principal after she set up a Facebook page to criticize her teacher is protected constitutionally under the First Amendment, a federal magistrate ruled.
The Frogger of Farting for the iPhone
Here’s an app, apparently ripped off from “hide the fart” @ addictinggames.com
The basic premise is that you try and fart when cars are near-by so that other people won’t notice. It’s free, of course there is a paid version. But…it’s not so addicting and sometimes it doesn’t even load without a restart.
I think we need more farting games though, I love the 3D environments. I give it an A+ for concept, C- for execution. So, an eh.
Why does the iPad look like a genetically modified iPhone?
This commercial (or whatever it is) really makes me reconsider wanting one of these. It’s just a big screen. You can’t fit that shit in your pocket, why the hell would anyone use one of these? The iPhone made sense, this shit not so much. Who the fuck is gonna’ whip this out when they got lost?
It’s just a kindle with apps. Hype, you let me down once again. BOO for the iPad.
Damn, it is pretty fucking sweet that all my apps are compatible with it though….wow.
your turn
If this was real I think it’d be much heavier than it looks. but damn…thats the coolest thing I’ve seen all day besides this:
Wouldn’t it be great if someone made one that actually works?
Perhaps I just over use them, but it seems to be a similar experience throughout the iPhone. Apps like facebook, Myspace, echofon, and even the Tumblr app are all so fucking slow and buggy.
I get to the point where unless I actually have something profound to say I won’t even use them. Because when it takes an entire minute to post two words on someone’s Wall, I am immediately turned off.
Myspace is just dying all together, not much use for that one anymore. Echofon loads so God Damn slowly if you have more than 200 people you are following. The Tumblr app has huge stability issues on my phone, however I never find it slow. It is frustrating that if you type larger amounts of text it will crash and erase everything. That’s a warning.
Anyone have any free alternatives? I think the thing that makes social media so great is it’s ease of accessibility. If the interfaces that we use to interact in these environments aren’t quick, useful and functional you are going to turn off users.
Like my Ma always said, “computers are so annoying, they say they can do all this stuff but when you try to use it it never works!”
I definitely don’t think it’s a hardware problem either, because I use some processor intensive apps that run perfectly.
So what’s the deal?