Where Does Fantasy End? – “The game doesn’t affect reality,” says a red-eyed addict after spending two nights playing virtually nonstop. “Reality affects the game.”

yes, coming from someone who’s been on irc all day.

from /.: Alien54 writes: “As reported in CNN, a hi-tech shanty town has arisen in Madrid, Spain, complete with pirated utilities and computer access. Known locally as El Campamento de Esperanza (The Camp of Hope), it is now a village of about 1,200 inhabitants, with libraries, bars, hot showers and cafeterias serving daily meals. They are skilled engineers and technicians, formerly employed by Sintel Telecommunications, a Spanish telecom company that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000. With a mixture of ingenuity and tenacity, the workers have transformed their claim to $10 million in unpaid wages and refusal to accept forced resignations into a national issue, by squatting on the property where they used to work.” Such a thing could never exist in the U.S. for longer than it took to load up the tear gas grenade launchers.

tim o’reilly writes that information wants to be valuable. i guess that also jives with my long held belief that information wants to be anthropomorphized. all is right with the world. when i’m tired, all that comes out is snark. i can’t help it. i should be sleeping.

ahh, i’m not usually one to take pleasure in others’ pain, but you just gotta enjoy the irony. Jenna Bush may be facing not only her father’s wrath, but a jail sentence under a zero-tolerance law he signed.

nota cultural: zero-tolerance doesn’t work

so, i just today got my system back up and running. i’m going to be trying to recover files tonight. wee!

Slashdot | Post-mortem of a DOS Attack – some interesting tidbits on a fascinating steve gibson article on how he was ddos’d and what he did to follow up.

Salary Survey of User Experience Professionals (Alertbox May 2001) – interesante. expected starting salary for a usability specialist in the us: $67,118. also: A usability specialist in California with five years’ experience has an estimated cash compensation of $90,118 a year, not counting stock options or other benefits.

CNN.com – Researcher: We descended from 33 daughters of Eve – May 29, 2001 – i sense some new cults being formed as we speak…

i’ve been reading “enter the zone,” written by dr barry sears, phd, and while its appealingly written, a quick calculation of the amount of protein i need (lean body mass * activity coefficient) and then multiplying out the 30%-40%-30% protien, carbs, fat ratio gives me a daily caloric intake of between 1060 and 1200 calories depending on the activitiy coefficient i use. this is extremely calorie restricted diet. i was maintaining my weight at 2100-2300 calories/day. now, what i want to ask is, great, this thing works great if you want to lose weight, but how the heck is it maintainable? what happens when you want to maintain your body fat %? where’s the caloric deficit going to go? does your bmr magically drop down? anyway, i’ve been doing a lot of reading recently trying to find some scientific evidence either way, but it’s been tough going. a lot of anectdotal stuff and all that. i wanna see studies! anyway, some interesting things i’ve come across:

“Although the 40-30-30 balance is fairly healthy, the 800 to 1,200 calories allowed daily aren’t,” says Susan Roberts, Ph.D., professor of nutrition at Tufts University in Boston. “That’s in addition to the fact that no such zone exists.”

• sciam ask the experts medicine – If a diet of caloric restriction can extend the life span of laboratory rats, then does the lifestyle of an athlete, who burns calories at a rapid rate, hasten the aging process?
• nytimes science, oct 17 2000 – How the Body Knows When to Gain or Lose
• Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults

tons of pro/con-zone articles and sites excluded for brevity. for those of you w/ extra time and lack of anything to do with it, like me, check out the scientific american ask the experts in medicine page. it has some really neat stuff.

hmm, disney apparently uses the same software protection as wal-mart, this thing called “armorguard”, but interestingly enough, i haven’t found any information on the company that makes or sells it.