The Null Device
2000/3/2
US school Beaver College, blocked by Internet filters, considers changing its name. (via Slashdot)
An interesting article listing 19th-century speculations on the future of sex: (Nerve, via A&L)
Hoping for a brighter future, some Darwinian feminist intellectuals prophesied that human beings in the new millennium would evolve beyond the animal demands of the body. They often translated this ideal into allegories of bodiless sex, hygienic sex and even mental sex.Sounds familiar, doesn't it? --acb
All men at Oneida made an effort to master this technique. Those who could not were labeled Leakers and were not allowed to participate in the Perfectionists' "complex marriage," a practice in which each community member is married to - and therefore allowed to have sex with - everyone else. Noyes himself designed the weekly sexual rota, assigning all women under 25 to men over 50, and vice versa. He also decided, according to eugenics and seniority, which couples would be allowed to have offspring.
The Daily Telegraph has an interesting feature about the curious history of the Britons who "went native" in India during the British Empire. (via Arts&Letters)
Scientists find gene for dwarfism in Pennsylvania Amish: (The Age)
Researchers traced 50 cases of Ellis-Van Creveld in Lancaster County to a couple who emigrated to eastern Pennsylvania in 1744.
Ellis-Van Creveld was first described by doctors in 1940. It is most commonly seen in Old Order Amish, whose religious beliefs require them to live apart from modern society, and other closed cultures that intermarry.
There is now an open-source implementation of the 6502 microprocessor. Apparently you can get these running at up to 166MHz, depending on FPGAs and layout software.
Is the current economic boom caused by investors being on Prozac? One psychiatric expert believes it may be:
Human nature has always given rise to booms and bubbles, followed by crashes and depressions. But if investor caution is being inhibited by psychotropic drugs, bubbles could grow larger than usual before they pop, with potentially catastrophic economic and political consequences.
British poet/waitress attempts to patent herself: (Reuters)
``It has taken 30 years of hard labor for me to discover and invent myself, and now I wish to protect my invention from unauthorized exploitation, genetic or otherwise,'' Maclean told the newspaper.