JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

“Google’s “internet evangelist” Vint Cerf has been in the UK and in the headlines this week, visiting the British Computer Society and The Guardian, among others. Both the Times and the Telegraph have picked up the scary “news” that the Internet will run out of IP addresses by 2010, warns Vint Cerf, or just a touch less accurately, Father of the internet: ‘web is running out of addresses’.

“It is certainly true that IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) is running out of addresses, because technically it only supports 4 billion of them (2^32). However, we saw this coming at least 16 years ago, and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) adopted Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) way back in 1996. This provides up to 2^128 addresses (340 trillion trillion trillion), which means there’s well over 4 billion addresses for everybody on the planet. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, IPv6 can provide 2^52 addresses for each of the 70 sextillion observable stars in the known universe, which I think may constitute “comfortable headroom” even for a pan-galactic internet.

“Further, most of us already have computers that can support IPv6, without even downloading an update. . .” Jack Schofield in The Guardian.

By Kevin Allman at blogofneworleans.com, via 3Quarks Daily.

Dear American, My Dear Friend:
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America.
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.I am working with “Mr. Phil Gram,” lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a citizen, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check.
We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction.
After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Do not discuss this message with anyone! Time is of the essence!
Yours Faithfully.
Minister of Treasury Hank Paulson

You’re walking into the mall. You stop at the guard’s desk for the obligatory security check. You know and he knows and everybody knows that this is part-pantomime and part-placebo, because even supposing you had a bomb in your possession, it is highly unlikely that the guard would identify it as such (Maybe if it were a large round ball with a fuse sticking out like in Road Runner cartoons). Weren’t there bag inspections as usual the day that Glorietta 2 blew up? 

So you’re doing your role in the pantomime when someone literally walks into you, treading on your jeans. It’s a woman so preoccupied with texting that she doesn’t look where she’s going. She says “Ay!” and keeps on walking. She does not say “Excuse me” or “Sorry”. It is as if you are invisible. Ordinarily you would let it go, forget about it. You put up with so much aggravation in this city, you hardly even notice it anymore. In fact, you’re so accustomed to dealing with rude, uncouth behavior that when people do exhibit good manners, you do a double-take. Every time someone says “Sorry” or “Excuse me” or “Walang anuman”, you feel like saying, “Thank you.” 

Today you do not feel like putting up with other people’s shit. Today you refuse to be invisible. You walk slowly behind the woman who had crashed into you. You observe that she is wearing flip-flops and an anklet. She is still texting, oblivious to her surroundings. You calculate her pace. At the right second, you step on the back of her flip-flop, sending her sprawling. “Oh I’m sorry,” you say sweetly, and walk away. Someday, while texting, she may walk into an open manhole and disappear forever.

Vote for vision, change, and someone who knows where Spain is. (I am a cat, but I know that (former) fighter pilots should know some geography lest they bomb the wrong place.) Someone who knows the difference between the former Soviet republic named Georgia and the state where Atlanta is. Someone with a sound environmental policy, who understands that polar bears are an endangered species (I love bears!).

Reject George Bush in lipstick!

This message was approved by Saffron Sassafras Saoirse Schmitz Sandler Zohan Zafra-Safina. T-shirt design by Wricky.

Gawker has compiled a list of the rumored loves of the lovely Anderson Cooper. The list includes a young Latino dolphin trainer,  a mystery guy he was seen taking a walk with, a wine distributor named Cesar, an Asian dog walker, an assistant to designer Diane von Furstenberg, and Another Gay Movie actor Jonathan Chase. 

We don’t care who Anderson goes out with, as long as he’s happy and they’re nice to his pets. 

Found this on boingboing.net: furniture that is a political statement. Abu Ghraib table by Phillip Toledano.

This came in the mail. We can actually help. Let’s.

“Muslim child warriors are on the rise. Weeks ago, the military showed video footage of the MILF training young kids for war. Last Monday, several peace advocates were kidnapped in Tipo-Tipo, Basilan and the police claim it was the handiwork of 10 “minors” believed to be members of the Abu Sayyaf Group.

“What is alarming is that there were young boys, as young as around 12 years old. They (victims) estimated their ages as between 12 and 19, or teenagers,” Philippine Navy Spokesperson Lt. Edgardo Arevalo said of the incident.

“Unfortunately, me and my wife Annora, a Tausug Muslim, no longer find the matter “alarming.” You grow up with guns, what do you become? You grow up with the culture of hatred, violence, distrust and ignorance, what do you become?

“So, what do we do to children who grew up thinking that the future depends on how they handle their guns? What do we do to children of war who grew up with guns and not books and better education? Kill them all? For those of us who have teenage children, this is a very hard question to answer. For me and my wife, this piece of depressing development in Basilan only emboldened us even more to step up our efforts to flood Mindanao with books through our “A-Book-Saya-Group” book donation project. Help make our ABSG fight the righteous fight not only against the ASG but the MILF, the MNLF and Christian vigilantes groups as well. Please help us expose poor children in war-torn Mindanao to books in the hope that they grow up to be professionals and peace-makers.  

“Initially, we have designated our Satti Grill House outlets in SM Fairview Food Court and at the corner of MH del Pilar and Padre Faura as drop-off points for the books. Later, we hope to tie up with newspapers and private firms to help take in the books. Donors may contact us through Nos. 7992745/3393732 or 09175208013/09195897879 or at zamboyo66@yahoo.com.”

From Armand and Ann Nocum, Concerned parents of 2 Christian-Muslim children

Look, it can’t hurt. Suppose you’re paranoid about giving anything that may end up in the hands of secessionist groups, terrorists, kidnappers. Well they’re books, what are they going to do, fling them at you? Use them as projectiles for catapults? Inflict the Death of a Thousand Paper Cuts? The children of Mindanao need something to read. Help if you can. Children are entitled to a childhood.

Here is Robert Young Pelton’s chilling piece on the horror in Sierra Leone, a war fought by children, many of them 8-year-olds.

My profile of Socorro Cancio Ramos, founder and chair of National Book Store, in the Star today.

I ask her if she’d ever imagined that the five-square-meter stall she opened in Escolta in 1939 would become this retail giant. She shakes her head. “Mapaaral ko lang ang mga anak ko, at kumain kami ng tatlong beses isang araw, tama na. Noong Japanese time, mabuhay ka lang, okay na.” (It was enough that I could send my children to school and we could have three meals a day. During the war, it was enough to just survive.)

Two years after she opened her little bookshop, World War II broke out in the Pacific and the Japanese invaded the Philippines. All books had to be submitted to Japanese censors, who cut out any mention of America. All their stocks were mutilated. “What will we sell?” Socorro asked her husband, Jose.

The answer: Anything and everything the customers needed. They sold candy, school supplies, cigarettes. She found a maker of tsinelas (rubber slippers), bought six pairs, discovered that the Japanese wanted tsinelas, and was soon selling hundreds of pairs. National Book Store might very well have been National Tsinelas.

As a cat I am always bored, so I follow human politics. It strikes me as bizarre that the Democrats are not ahead in the polls by 30 points, given the quality of their opponents. On one hand you have highly intelligent and accomplished persons, and on the other hand you’ve got those who graduated at the bottom of their class, who bounced from school to school, who are suspicious of books…Apparently voters want someone they can “relate” to. Do they not already face, on a daily basis, the consequences of having elected one they could “relate” to?

I have heard that cuteness of the cheerleader variety is a factor in this exercise. It is true that as a kitten I benefited greatly from my cuteness. However, picking a kitten to adopt is not the same as picking the leader of the free world. I have power over rodents and cockroaches, but the PUSA (President of the United States) has the power of war and pestilence over other countries. Keep the world safe for humans and cats. Reject mediocrity. Particularly those who hate cats, books, and cats who love books. Vote wisely.

This message was approved by Koosalagoopagoop Galadriel Ivanisevic Visconti-Sforza O’Brien. Does your cat have a catty political statement? Send picture and statement to urban.matthias@gmail.com.

Photo: The Stalin Front by Gert Ledig, NYRB Classics, P200 at A Different Bookstore at the Manila Book Fair. Tsinelas bookmark by Scribe, P65 at Powerbooks.

I saw a copy of Soul, a collection of stories by Andrey Platonov, published by NYRB, at Fully Booked on Bonifacio High Street. I thought, “Hmm, maybe I should read some non-Russians,” and didn’t buy it. A week later I regretted not buying it, so I rang Fully Booked’s customer service. I didn’t have the number of the Bonifacio branch, so I called Rockwell. 

Me: Do you have Soul by Andrey Platonov?
Fully Booked: (Checking their database) Sorry ma’am, we don’t have that title.
Me: Could you check with your Bonifacio branch?
Fully Booked: Sorry ma’am, they don’t have that title.
Me:  But I just saw it last week. Did someone buy it?
FB: Sorry ma’am, ek ek ek ek ek.
Me: Ok, could you tell me what NYRB publications you have in stock? (I assumed that their database can show stocks arranged by publisher.) 
FB: Sorry ma’am we can only check by title and author.

The next day I happened to be in Rockwell so I went to Fully Booked to see with my own eyes. Of course they had the Platonov. It was filed in Fiction, under P. A few days later I was in Bonifacio so I looked for the Platonov again. They, too, had a copy, filed in Classics, under P. As my late mother used to say, “Look for it with your eyes, not with your mouth.”

I asked customer service if they had any children’s books by Maurice Sendak. According to their database, they had several titles. So two clerks were dispatched to the Children’s sections to find them. I watched them do their search. The problem, I think, is that the clerks could not tell by looking what the books’ titles were. Note to HR: Teach your staff how to find the title on a book cover. Finally I wandered off. To their credit, they kept looking. An hour later, as I was leaving the store, a clerk came up to me with Where The Wild Things Are. 

Grover noted that the recent Manila Book Fair looked like a big religious book swap. During my visit I avoided the booth called “Stories With Moral Values!” lest I be spotted as one of the possessed and exorcised.

Mat, originally uploaded by 160507.

 
In an ABC interview, the closest friends of the Republican VP nominee revealed that she hates cats.

Meow! We knew there had to be another reason why our hairs stand on end every time we see you on TV, moose-huntin’-and-dressin’ woman. Another reason besides the obvious fact that you are not qualified to be America’s Number Two and the thought of you being so close to a nuclear arsenal gives us the creeps. You sound catty enough in your speeches, but we are more highly-evolved than you are. For starters, we understand what evolution is. We are deeply offended on behalf of Socks’ human. Cat-hater, you’re no Hillary Clinton. While cats are either monarchists or anarchists, we approve of the Democratic nominee’s feline elegance and intelligence. We do not recognize the quaint concept of borders, but as members of the United Species, we are for Obama.

This message was approved by Matthias Eomer Octavian Federer-Urban.

There has to be a better word for someone who loves books than “bookworm.” No offense to worms, which are essential to the ecological balance, but they’re way down the food chain and have appeared in too many horror images — decomposing corpses, rotten fruit, slimy stuff.

People who go on and on about foie gras and that grotty little dive with the delightful ceviche are called “foodies,” but we were beaten into “bookies” by sinister men with kneecap-busting associates. I’ve tried “bibliophile,” but there’s something effete and artsy-fartsy about it — think of men in smoking jackets holding forth about their first editions (and still living with their mothers).

The candidates: bibliophile, bibliomaniac, bibliophage, bibliotaph, biblioleptic.  Seizures in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.