The New Scientist asks Is it really bad to be sad. Apparently there are some compelling security arguments for sadness:

Hard evidence for the importance of sadness in humans is difficult to come by, but there are lots of ideas about why our propensity to feel sad might have evolved. It may be a self-protection strategy, as it seems to be among other primates that show signs of sadness. An ape that doesn’t obviously slink off after it loses status may be seen as continuing to challenge the dominant ape – and that could be fatal.

This does not really surprise me. I like the old Hungarian saying “the believer is happy, the doubter is wise” because it emphasizes that doubt may in fact have a silver lining. This is usually forgotten in a “yes” or “just do it” culture. So the implication here is if you use your capability to be sad, you actually may be smarter and safer.

The Getty Center has an exhibition called Tango with Cows, named after a book and poem by Vasily Kamensky:

The absurd image of farm animals dancing the tango evokes the clash in Russia between a primarily rural culture and a growing urban life. During the years spanning the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, Russia was in spiritual, social, and cultural crisis. The moral devastation of the failed 1905 revolution, the famines of 1911, the rapid influx of new technologies, and the outbreak of World War I led to disillusionment with modernity and a presentiment of apocalypse.

This exhibition explores the way Russian avant-garde poets and artists responded to this crisis through their book art.

You can page through the books online, listen to the poem in Russian and English, and download a 6MB PDF of the book.

The Sunlight Foundation points out that the US Government has set a bad example for data retention laws.

Yesterday, in a major victory for open government and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), a federal judge ruled against the Bush Administration latest attempt to keep secret the identities of White House visitors and declared the White House illegally deleted Secret Service computer records.

[…]

At the direction of the White House, the Secret Service was deleting visitor records from the beginning of the Bush Administration until October 2004, when the deletions were discovered when open government activists attempted to get access to them.

Apparently the administration’s tactic was to drag the lawsuit out until Bush could leave office. Bush’s actions made it very tricky to tell companies to follow the law, since he had a record of doing the opposite. He was never clearly breaking them, but very very adept at finding loopholes and getting out of town before the prosecutors could catch up to him.

Identity management discussions are so much fun as they bring up all the various ways people can alter their appearances. Now these discussions can be even more fun, laced with images from Sleeveface:

I was wondering what to do with that lightsaber I was recently given as a gift…just need the Bonnie Tyler album and I’m ready for Halloween. Well, that’s assuming I don’t proceed with plans for my Davy Crockett “King of the Wild Frontier” costume.