No updates lately due to grad school, moving, and the semester winding down. My first year at UT-Austin was rough. The quantitative methods courses I took were hands-down the hardest, time-consuming, life-draining courses I've taken -- ever. Much worse than Calculus III, although the work was enjoyable (even if it's unlikely I'll really dabble in a lot of the methodology we went over). AEJMC rejected my paper submission, which was predictable since my results were weak and I submitted to the wrong division. Looks like I should have gone with the Critical and Cultural Studies division when applying rather than the International division. Still need to read my reviewer's comments, though.

On the plus side, a lot of this work will be recycled into the historical/background section of my thesis, which I'll start writing in the fall.

No real update here. I've been slacking on this site and other, more important projects, such as TNTR. Some stuff in the works to bring Michael Albert (ZNet and ZMag co-founder) down to Austin, which involves coordinating something with APPS. Been reading several books lately as well, now that I'm not flooded with course work, so I might try to get some book reviews and maybe some sort of literature out this summer. No promises, but if I'm goaded enough I'll certainly do something worthwhile.

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I sent the email below off to a complete stranger on a whim. A slice of internet history for the curious, though:

Hi,

I came across your cat resource site by accident and noticed you bring up the infamous Tubcat on a page discussing feline obesity. On your site, you mention that the cat's weight is unknown. I figured you might be curious to learn more about the animal.

As it happens, I have a framed picture of Tubcat hanging over my desk, which was actually clipped from the publication the picture initially appeared in (here in the states, at least). My mom showed me the picture when I was a senior in high school (I'm now in grad school), and I've kept it ever since. This was well before Tubcat became an internet superstar.

First, the picture initially appeared in Us Weekly, p. 96, on October 1, 2001. The cat's name is Tulle, and the 12-year-old girl holding him is Tahabita (spelled Tabitha elsewhere) Pedersen. They're from Denmark, and Tulle was 6 years old in the picture. The caption also mentions Tulle's weight, which was 43 pounds when the picture was taken -- at the time, about 4 pounds shy of the then-fattest cat on record, an Australian tabby named Himmy.

My Dutch is awful, but it's my understanding that Tulle died in January of this year, of diabetes. Link below, if you're interested. Anyway, I thought I would send this along, since it looked like you'd poured a lot of time into writing that page.

http://www.kvp.se/nyheter/1.992641/varldens-fetaste-katt-ar-dod

DC Tedrow

RIP, Tubcat. Ye shall be missed.

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On Monday, Jan. 14, TCADP will sponsor the following event, which I've been asked to speak at:

Sara Hickman Concert

Monday, January 8, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Burning Bush Coffeehouse
Parkway Presbyterian Church
3707 Santa Fe
Corpus Christi, TX
For info, call: 852-7239
Tickets at door: $15 

Click for Google Maps directions. I'm personally not thrilled about the high ticket price, and tend to think TCADP places too much emphasis on fundraising. I'll see what can be done about letting students and other people in for free who are more interested in the anti-death penalty stuff than the music. If not that, maybe another group will be willing to sponsor a free anti-death penalty talk.

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A few years ago, I mirrored a hoax version of a hoax eBay auction for 24 Japanese children. To make a very long story a very short one, the result of this was that I met the first person ever banned from eBay and helped harass some racist plagiarist. Anyway, I lost touch with this guy for a very long time, but I've come into contact with him again.

He brings Blackle to my attention, which is an all-black web browser. There's really nothing special about it, of course. Any monkey could make a black version of Google. The idea behind it actually is pretty neat, though:

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

I usually think internet campaigns to save the world are stupid and a waste of time, but this one's not so bad. Of course, as with all things much of the justification is flimsy. The idea behind Blackle only works if we assume people are all using CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors, which actually do use more energy for brighter colors. LCD monitors (flatscreens, plasmas, etc.) don't work the same way, and typically use less energy on the whole to begin with.

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It looks like I'm still having some problems getting the Update Mailer to send out emails to people after posts are made. I just toggled some settings, so maybe it works now. Tell me if it does. 

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I've just installed a new component to my website's backend that allows registered users to receive emailed updates from this website. The really cool thing about this is that users can choose which sections of my website they want to receive emailed updates from. So, for instance, if a person wishes to receive only and all updates concerning Radical Theory (the section of my site covering thoughts on Parecon, Syndicalism, etc.), then they can check that box and not be bothered with emails regarding blog posts, philosophy, and all that other jazz.

Maybe it's just me, but this is really neat. My site basically sends out a TomGram to interested subscribers. I've waited a long time to find an easy-to-install script that does this, and now I've come across a Joomla! component that does this and more. Score.

Hopefully this will provoke more discussion on this site rather than other blogging outlets such as LiveJournal. It's not that I don't like LiveJournal and all, but I'd much rather consolidate all my writing and discussions on this site. It helps me search through it later, work on articles in progress, etc.

So if you're a friend of mine and regularly discuss politics or economics and all that stuff with me on LiveJournal, then please register an account with DCTedrow.net and then subscribe to receive email updates. (The email subscribe option is available only to registered users who are logged in.) I really would rather drift away from LiveJournal, but I'd also like to stay in touch.

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