Once upon a time, there was an ugly girl with three beautiful, but cruel sisters. They always treated her cruelly, making her do nothing but clean the house, while they went out and courted wealthy men (well, except for Nancy, who courted wealthy women). This ugly girl, Francine, heard about a wonderful upcoming ball called the Tomato Ball, and she begged her sisters to let her go. They just laughed, tossed their spaghetti sauce off of their plates and onto the walls, and told her to clean it instead. Their dates arrived, and they went off to the ball. Francine sat on her knees, and cried, wishing she could attend the ball and meet someone wonderful. Just then, a shining green crystal cup appeared in the middle of the room. "My child, fear not, you're not really ugly, come take the cup, and you will be transformed, and will attend the wonderful ball". She stepped forward, arms outstretched to take the cup, but tripped over her broom, fell forward, and swiped the cup out of the air on her way down. A faint cry of "Noooooooooo!" was heard from the cup as it shattered on the floor. She sighed.. dreams are such fragile things.. and tearfully stood up to take the broom and clean the shards. *sweep* *sweep*

• crunch* .. she looked down, felt a sharp pain, and saw that one of the shards

of glass had entered her foot. She screamed, and suddenly found herself at the ball, all dressed in a gown. She felt her face -- she was pretty, and she was dancing with a handsome man with a strange goatee. The music was playing, and she was dancing, but her foot began to hurt more and more. She ignored it, and spun in the man's arms. At the height of the music, he lifted her into the air, she did a leap, and for a brief moment, was like Icarus, her heart soaring. Then, a soft landing, and ouch, her foot was agony, a slight trail of blood left behind her. She kicked her bloody slippers off, suddenly tired of this, and yanked out the crystal splinter. In a flash, she was back at home, looking the same, but different inside. She quickly poured some vinegar onto her foot, wrapped it, and put on some comfortable shoes to seek her fortune. Some years later, she started a group that made water mills, and, while still ugly, was happy. The spaghetti sauce stains never did come out.

From the "Who's controlling my mouse cursor?" department, there's a new Wireless USB standard under development. Sure, it sounds like a good idea, but the security is going to be really difficult to get right, and means making existing devices a lot more complex than they are now. Imagine, for example, keyboards and mice -- presumably WUSB devices are each going to have a 'fingerprint', and some kind of a policy manager to say "I don't want his keyboard talking to my computer", and of course more general things like "Only allow keyboard X to talk to my computer", which doesn't work so well when that keyboard dies. It's gonna be ugly. Worse, the article suggests that the default behavior for WUSB devices should be to install drivers and configure things automatically for the user. Systems that do this will, no doubt, end up frequently violating the wishes of the user -- there's something problematic about doing things to the user's computer without asking...

Here's an article about something that's been happening for years -- people like myself have been working to undermine controls that other nations put on their citizens. It (correctly) illustrates that there's a conflict here -- the ability of group/contries to maintain their own culture versus notions of liberty. A quote from a member of this particular group from the article: "We do think that information should be free, but we do need to find a balance for respect for sovereign states to preserve their own culture" Of course, others from that group disagree, as do I. There are cultural ideals that are by nature evangelical (that is, they want to spread), and it is no different asking them to be supressed than to ask that the ability to maintain cultural control be supressed. It is, in essence, a culture clash. Enough visibility of such cultural clashes expose that glasnost has limits too, or more simply, that liberalism has not stepped outside the game of cultural politics even though it has instead changed it. We're happy to invite other cultures to the festival, as we will assimilate them (well, partly, anyhow -- more like likely ask them to give things up). It might be interesting to compare this case to, for example, helping an Amish slip away from the community discreetly to play video games every so often. Would I do that? .. Yes, yes I would. In this case, it's a good analogy. As westerners, we pledge to respect any culture, or remains of a culture, that can survive exposure to the thunderstorm of media, advertisements, and evangelizing we put forth. In some ways I'm really disgusted by it too. It's so complex.

Ahh, but there's still good stuff happening. Someone started a company that removes pollutants from soil, both turning a profit and teaching the masses how to farm. That's really great.