RKNet Blog... Thing

On a much lighter note than some of the recent material, I’m feeling another wikipedia flood, or “words to know” post coming on real soon. As usual, it will capitalize on my total figurative boner for history.

In the meantime, here’s a link to my mum’s burgeoning Zazzle gallery.
claudia522’s Gallery at Zazzle
Not much to it at the moment, but we’re discussing various options for clever products. She’s got a lot of photos that could potentially make for some very lovely prints.

If anybody has any ideas, do let me know.

Edit: speaking of promotion…
I heard from that Venture Brothers Season 2 will be coming out spring next year. In the meantime, there are plenty of ways to get your hands on the delicious first season. I’m pretty freaking excited about it. There are a LOT of things I like about that show. The episodes of season 2 I caught are all freaking priceless.
Incidentally, one of my favorite Monarch quotes? “I met her on the LiveJournal!” I definitely roffled over that one. Boy howdy.
Through the glory of that Publick’s massive thank you post, I also got to find out a lot more about his partner in crime, Doc Hammer. Like, for example, that the sexy artist has a Mrs. Hammer. (IMDB says they’re separated though. That sucks. Who put that up there anyway? Seems kinda rude.) http://doc-hammer.deviantart.com/ Check out some of his gorgeous portrait art over at this here deviantart account (which I keep neglecting to sign up for *duck*).<p

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/

I stumbled across this link earlier. Now, I’ve seen a few PETA-based propaganda booths in my day. Much like the “Truth” campaign, they’re big fans of large, symbolic, sometimes angry displays of protest against things they believe are wrong. While they might be passionate about what they do, and may be - in most cases - correct in their statements, I personally don’t react well to the types of conversion methods used.

PETA Kills Animals seemed sort of suspicious to me based on that. Any form of extreme activism is bound to engender some kind of extreme activism from the opposite camp, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure who would want to be seen as being opposed to the ethical treatment of animals. So I did a little bit of Google news searching on one particular claim made over at PETA Kills Animals. PETA Animal-Cruelty Trial Date Finally Set I gotta say looking up anything with “peta” in the Google News section only turned up other organizations that PETA has attacked, rather than the law coming down on anyone who works for PETA.

A regular Google search did pull up a matching local news story, however. http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=93730&ran=57036

So that story is at least legit. Still, one has to wonder what is the agenda there? The About page at petakillsanimals.com marks them as being associated with the Center for Consumer Freedom. A quick search for these guys brings the following items up:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Consumer_Freedom
These guys say that the CCF is a sit and spin for all the things that organizations like PETA fight against. I’d be willing to believe that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Consumer_Freedom
Then there’s the wiki entry, which confirms sourcewatch’s assertion that this organization is paid to support the interests of a few very large industries which aren’t renown for their regard for health or moral practices.

I’ll also say that the couple reviews at Alexa aren’t very encouraging either. One response is a vauge “lol itz teh interestingz cause animul pplz gots teh sekrits!” and the other is a direct slam.

I’m all for public reminders that no organization is without it’s flaws, it helps prevent types prone to holier-than-thou behavior from appearing infallible. I’m all for the promotion of personal responsibility. I’m not real keen on someone trying to douse me in false activism, or in this case I guess you could say anti-activism. All in all? This was a pretty disappointing, but unsurprising, discovery.

What are your thoughts on activism? How far does a person or a group have to go before they are considered “extreme”? Are there any groups that personally get your goat that deserve exposing?

Challenge: iPods are pretty famous for taking the liberty of wiping themselves out when you plug them into a computer other than the one you set it up on in the first place. It’s got a bad case of “are you my mommy?” that makes it hostile to other PCs but you really want to be able to manage the music on more than one PC using your iPod. What to do? Read the rest of this entry »

http://aras.org/

Found this while ensuring I had the title for Jung’s Man and His Symbols correct. I haven’t signed up yet because I don’t want to ruin my work day with stuff that’s way more fun, but I’m looking forward to logging in and mucking around in here. Oh yes. That way the next time I go to post some little “who am I” quiz thing or another Madam Zola card (the art on those is so neat), I can also provide a little bit of symbolic background and perhaps provide a more traditional interpretation of the symbolism at work.

Very exciting stuff. If anyone signs up and starts poking around, let me know what you think of the site.
Enjoy!

Too big to be an icon, too lazy to edit it down.

Still, this ImageChef thing is pretty neat, in a completely shallow way. It reminds me of the candy heart and church sign generators of yore.

I love stuff like this. Little snippets of art and generalized text. Sometimes luck of the draw comes up with the most interesting things. I gotta say I could definitely use some pampering and extravagance. Dying my hair wasn't really much of a life-changing experience. I need a freaking vacation, or a bucket of cold water to the face. Something to shake me up out of my recent icky patterns. Something to reduce the number of nightmares I've been having recently would be nice also.

All aboard the rofflecoaster. Ted Leonsis is popping up all over the internet these days. That's what you get for thinking you can control the SERPs for your own name. This is a pretty comprehensive pile of links relating to Ted Leonsis and his SERP paranoia, and it's pretty funny. Enjoy!

Please, check out some of these links. :)

read more | digg story