The Vacuum Tube Radio Kit allows you to put together a real, functional, vacuum-tube radio! And it looks so sharp, once you've built it you're going to want to show it off. Includes instructions in Japanese, but we've got English instructions right here under the "How To" tab. MAKE is proud to be the exclusive distributor in North America for these brilliant kits, part of Gakken's Sophisticated Science Kit for Adults series.

Kit includes:

• Pin straightener for the vacuum tubes
• 
  
• Testing microphone so you can make sure everything is hooked up correctly to produce sounds
• 
  
• Rubber feet on the fiber board to minimize "howling"
• 
  
• Variable condenser to allow for finer tuning
• 
  
• Re-creation of 60-year-old circuits
• 
  
• More powerful transformer for better volume and sound quality
• 
  
• Runs on five 9V batteries and one C battery (not included)
• 
  
• Tubes are 100% functional NOS tubes
• 
  

A fossil amphibian has come to light on land owned by FedEx and has been named Fedexia striegeli

Fossil hunters have named a 300m-year-old amphibian in honour of the courier service FedEx, after unearthing the creature on land owned by the company near a US airport.

The remains of the ancient amphibian, which lived 70m years before the first dinosaurs, were recovered in 2004 from a slab of rock near Pittsburgh International Airport by Adam Striegel, an amateur fossil enthusiast on a geology field trip.

Researchers at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh described the creature on the basis of its remarkably well-preserved 12cm-long skull, which survived fossilisation without being crushed.

A group led by David Berman, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the museum, identified the amphibian as a new genus and species, Fedexia striegeli, in the institution's journal, Annals of Carnegie Museum.

Fedexia belongs to a family of extinct amphibians called trematopidae, which lived at a time when the Earth's climate was in the throes of a dramatic transition. The planet's oceans were increasingly becoming locked up in polar ice, causing sea levels to drop and vast swathes of land to become drier and warmer.

Gradually, some groups of amphibians, including the trematopids, left their mostly aquatic environments and became more adapted to a terrestrial habitat, returning to the water perhaps only to mate or lay eggs.

The remarkable preservation of its skull allowed palaeontologists to identify Fedexia as a trematopid, mainly by a hallmark feature of the group: an elongated external nasal opening.

When it died, what is now Pittsburgh was situated near the equator and experienced huge downpours, making an ideal environment for amphibians to flourish.

"What is particularly amazing about this discovery is that it was made by an amateur who had no prior experience in recognising vertebrate fossils in the rock, a talent that usually takes years to develop," said Berman.

• Fossils
• Zoology
• Evolution
• United States

At the annual Polish film festival, a pair of sensational new films – Mall Girls and Snow White, Russian Red – give a glimpse of life in post-communist, post-EU accession Poland

When it comes to the Poles in their midst, your average Brit's grip on the facts tends to be a little shaky. There are more than a million Poles in residence in the UK, aren't there? Or is the number closer to half that? Some say they're toughing out the recession; others declare they are being lured home in droves by repatriation campaigns. It seems as if there's a Polski sklep on every high street, but where the hell's a shop selling kiełbasa when you need one?

But if most of us are unsure what it's like for Poles in Britain, we're utterly in the dark as to what it's like back in Poland. A pair of sensational (if not sensationalising) new Polish films could be just the spotlight needed: Mall Girls and Snow White, Russian Red, which were recently given their UK premieres at the Kinoteka Polish international film festival. Each is a glimpse of Poland's first post-communist generation, and shows a country beset by social ills: teenage prostitution, drug use, cheap consumerism, hooligans in ladies' furs terrorising fast-food employees. In other words, they seem to depict a country not far different from the UK.

Poland's Trainspotting is the marketing hook most often Velcroed on to Snow White, Russian Red. The film is a flashy adaptation by Xawery Żuławski (son of cult director Andrzej) of the novel by Dorota Masłowska, who was all of 19 when her book stormed the Polish literary scene. Our hero is Yobbo, whose name says it all – unemployed, violent, directionless, with a taste for white powders and seeing red. And he's just been dumped. He attempts to cope via the twin expedients of amphetamines and incoherent political discussions with a motley crew of goth chicks, butch thuggettes and, for a hilarious few minutes, a dorky student whose interest he rewards by peeing on her budgie. But Yobbo also has a certain garrulous way with words, a babbling stream of consciousness – and he's about to learn the words are not his own.

The film plays on Polishness: not only in the language which, in the original (though not the somewhat clunky translation) is a highly inventive slang, but in Yobbo himself, who walks around in a white football jacket marked Polska (Poland). "In the irony of the level of the language, we Poles can find ourselves, our sense of humour," Żuławski told me after the UK premiere. Yobbo is a "dresiarze", which translates roughly as "tracksuit guy". This is the Polish equivalent of the British hoodie, their tight jeans and leather jackets a typical sight in smaller Polish towns. "He is representative of a state of mind of men in Poland nowadays, a kind of typically male consciousness," Żuławski says. For Yobbo, the game is rigged: the west is corrupt and a shadowy figure named Robert Sztorm calls all the shots at home. There is a hopelessness in Yobbo's having "no future" that, the film suggests, makes him a character or puppet: at the beck of outside forces, his life not under his own control.

If Snow White is a kind of metafictional chav poem, Mall Girls is straight-up social realism, and harder to watch for it. The girls in question are a gang of bubble-popping 14-year-olds in pink plastic jackets and white knee-high boots who sell their bodies to older men in exchange for heart-shaped jewellery from the local equivalent of Accessorize. Ala is the "good" girl who gets swept up in the mall girls' world, half-seduced and half-belittled by Milena, who supposedly wants nothing more than to help Ala enjoy the "high life" – which to her means going back to a man's apartment rather than just sucking him off in the car. Ala's tragic attempt to try to catch up sexually makes Katarzyna Rosłaniec's film an affecting, occasionally agonising experience.

Both films seem to suggest a generation gap has stranded young Poles. The mall girls don't know any better than to trade virginity for jeans because their elders never taught them otherwise. "It seems that sex for clothes or other things is becoming the new kind of prostitution in Poland," says Małgorzata Szwarocka, a sexologist in Warsaw. "Without proper sexual education in schools, and the consumptional lifestyle, it is unfortunately a natural consequence." Poland is still a "land of prudery", she says, and the film has shocked the communist generation and started a national debate, similar to the ongoing one about enjo kosai ("compensated dating") in Japan – another country with a huge generation gap.

This very shock is symptomatic of the problem, Rosłaniec seems to suggest, of older Poles being vastly out of touch with their progeny. When a tearful Ala asks her father for advice, he tells her to go to sleep. From her philandering mother, Ala learns either of two things: a) cheating on your lover is fine, or b) nothing. Her cynical teacher, meanwhile, strangles Ala's fledgling work ethic by announcing, "I'll throw away the tests that are an embarrassment to us all," and simply passes the entire class. In Snow White, Yobbo's mother is conspicuously absent, and we glimpse the author Masłowska's own "real" life: drab, unhappy drudgery both at home and at school.

Poverty also raises its squalid head: the financial promise of the EU is still a fairytale. Milena's friend Julia's desperate parents beat her, not because she's pregnant but because the young mothers' centre charges a fee. Julia's own financial goals have started so low, her friends have to lambast her before she demands her sexual "patrons" buy her what she wants – whereupon she finally scores that sparkling plastic ring she had her eye on. Ala's father can't afford tomato for his sandwiches, let alone a newer mobile phone to replace his daughter's brick. If her social status depends on it, then what's a girl to do?

These two arresting films seem to suggest young Poles are being exposed to all the lures and temptations of western consumerism, but without the crucial protection of an older generation wise to its dangers. Capitalism can be nasty: those rhinestone nails may glitter, but they sure ain't gold. It seems as if parts of the new EU Poland really are becoming more like Britain every day.

· The 8th Kinoteka Polish international film festiwal runs until 13 April at venues across London. Visit kinoteka.org.uk for details.

• Festivals
• Poland

Andrew Heaney, Director of Strategy and Regulation for UK ISP TalkTalk, is once again slamming proposals by the UK govt to crackdown on illegal file-sharing, especially if it involves Internet disconnection.

“We all know that the government’s disconnection proposals to deter illegal file-sharing are daft and dangerous,” he says. “And many would agree that the way many people in the music industry have reacted is a little misguided.”

He points out that the music industry has a long history of attacking technology rather than trying to adapt to it.

Case in point? Home taping back in the 80s.

He continues:

If, like me, you remember the 80s, you may also recall recording the Top 40 on Sunday nights. Up and down the country, people were hovering over their cassette players with their fingers over the pause button, trying to get the perfect recording before Tony Blackburn spoke and ruined it. Back then the music industry told us that home taping would signal the end of the music industry and that it must be stamped out. There are clear parallels with today’s debate about file-sharing and the Digital Economy Bill.

Heaney furthers his point by discussing the results of some research conduced by TalkTalk that found a majority of file-sharers would simply switch to alternative methods of of accessing copyright-protected content for free, if using P2P services leaves them vulnerable to disconnection.

“In fact, 80% of 18-34 year olds questioned in our survey said that if new legislation made it dangerous to use P2P services they would switch to using methods which are undetectable,” he says.

So much for disconnection being that silver bullet to end illegal file-sharing.

“It doesn’t matter how many sites are blocked, how many families are snooped on or how many customers are disconnected, music fans who want to can and will get the content they want online for free,” adds Heaney. “Whatever measures are taken it will have little impact on the music industry’s coffers but will leave in its wake innocent customers disconnected from the internet.”

Moreover, Heaney calls the anti-file-sharing efforts “futile deterrents” that won’t solve the music industry’s problems. Its problems can only be solved by developing new business models that acknowledge what music fans want in the digital age.

Imagine that, giving customers what they want?

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

What would you do if you found out that you had an extremely contagious disease that required you to remain in quarantine for the several months? If you’re like most people, you would probably cry and cry and cry… and then curl up in the corner and commence eating your hair.

But if you were Christiaan Van Vuuren (a.k.a. The Fully Sick Rapper), you would make a series of kick-ass viral rap videos that would launch you into the firmament of Internet stardom.

If you’re an avid fan of the viral video space, you’ve probably seen Van Vuuren’s vids by now — among them a trio of parody rap songs that deal with being stuck in quarantine after catching a bad case of Tuberculosis.

The concept might sound rather after-school-special-esque — or, frankly, lame — to the uninitiated, but Van Vuuren’s amateur videos are a hell of a lot more entertaining than a lot of the schlock that professional comedians churn out. Why? Because they’re coming from a very real place.

After seeing Van Vuuren’s raps popping up all over the Internet, Mashable sat down for an interview (via Skype) with the 27-year-old Aussie, direct from his hospital room in Sydney. (We’ve embedded the video portion below for those who aren’t fans of big blocks of text.)

Up until December of this past year, Christiaan Van Vuuren had a proper nine-to-five job in media sales that required him to pull a suit jacket over his tattooed arms and have lunches with clients and the like.

During one of these lunches, however, Van Vuuren started coughing up blood. Soon after, he found himself in the hospital, where the doctor told him that he had a hole in his lung, which Van Vuuren describes as roughly the size of an Aussie 50 cent coin. The diagnosis? Tuberculosis — a disease he likely contracted four years ago during time spent in South Africa. The affliction lay dormant until a recent trip to South America.

Van Vuuren was admitted to the hospital at the start of December, and at the time he thought he would only be there for roughly two weeks. Still, the seclusion took its toll. “I was itching to get out, banging on the walls,” he says. “That was when I made that first rap song, ‘I’m Not Sick, But I’m Sick Sick.’”

He wrote the rap and recorded it using Garage Band. “At the start, it was just to make mates laugh,” he explains, but after friends convinced him to make a video for the song and upload it to YouTube, a local radio station covered the story, as well as Australian morning program Today. At that point, the video had around 10,000 hits. “I was a bit embarrassed that that many people had seen me without my shirt on and in the shower,” Van Vuuren says.

Van Vuuren was let out of the hospital around the first of the year, but after his condition worsened, he found himself back in quarantine, where he made his second video, “Life in Quarantine.” This time, the video spread to the States, where it was picked up by sites like College Humor. Currently, it has garnered more than a quarter of a million hits in less than a month.

The popularity of the video came as a shock to the former punk rocker (Van Vuuren has a musical background, but he admits that he hasn’t messed around with instruments in any real capacity for five years.) He’d never even used Garage Band or iMovie before. “It’s unreal, it’s giving me something to do. I feel like I’ve got a nine-to-five job now,” he says.

And that feeling of purpose had been a boon to the media man-turned-rapper. “I’ve taken my focus off of when I’m going to get out of here and when I’m going to be healthy,” he explains. “I try to apply [my energy] more to what I can do while I’m in here to have not wasted the time. I think the worst thing would be — and I think it’s made me feel the worst when I’ve been in here — is the whole world will keep on spinning out there and and I’m here in this room doing nothing.”

One look at Van Vuuren’s YouTube channel shows that he’s done a lot more than wallow: there’s his parody raps as well as a couple of other joke songs about his ukulele and hopeless crush on Today host Leila McKinnon, as well as his own take on MTV’s Cribs and a sketch about a hospital-bound Storm Trooper. Van Vuuren also plans to start making webisodes about his time in quarantine.

In addition to being a video-editing virgin, Van Vuuren also says he’s “as green as they come” when it comes to social media. “In the industry that I work in, in media, I’ve gone to these courses before where they’re talking about the power of social media,” he recalls. “And they’re like, ‘All right, let me demonstrate something: Who of you hasn’t got a Facebook?’ And I look around realize I’m the only person in the whole room of about 140 people who has their arm up.”

That all changed after coming down with TB. Now, Van Vuuren has a Facebook page with close to 6,000 fans, as well as a newly launched Twitter account with a burgeoning list of followers.

And, surprisingly, the trolls seem to be keeping their distance. “I don’t know whether everyone’s just like, ‘Oh, it’s so cute that he did that and he’s sick and he’s in a hospital, let’s watch that!’ And then as soon as I’m not sick anymore people are going to go, ‘Uhhh, you weren’t really that funny,’” Van Vuuren says with a laugh.

Either way, he thrives off of the support this community gives him, members of which send photoshopped images of the viral star in various exotic locals and photos of themselves replicating moments from his videos. Van Vuuren also gets more than his share of marriage proposals from fawning female fans.

“I’m sure that’s what God helped us make the Internet for or why the Internet is here,” Van Vuuren says (referring to his supporting fans, not the marriage proposals — per se). “It’s for things like that. Because when you’re so lonely and in such a place on your own, you can be around so many people or be supported by so many people.”

Continue reading Final Fantasy XIII tops UK sales chart, Just Dance shows stamina

Final Fantasy XIII tops UK sales chart, Just Dance shows stamina originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Final Fantasy XIII tops UK sales chart, Just Dance shows stamina

Final Fantasy XIII tops UK sales chart, Just Dance shows stamina originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Celine Lesage faces life imprisonment for aggravated homicide, after children's corpses were found at her Valognes flat in 2007

A 38-year-old French woman has admitted killing six of her newborn children, at a trial in north-west France.

Celine Lesage, who faces life imprisonment if convicted of aggravated homicide, was arrested in 2007 after her then partner found the babies' corpses wrapped in plastic bags in the basement of her Valognes flat.

Speaking today at the opening of a four-day trial, Lesage bowed her head as the charges were read out, before responding: "I acknowledge the facts."

Chief judge Herve Locu pressed her to find out whether the babies had been stillborn or born alive. After repeated questioning, Lesage responded: "They were alive."

Her lawyer, Veronique Carre, said Lesage "does not contest the facts ... but isn't explaining them either". Several medical and psychological experts are expected to testify at the trial.

"We are here to try to understand you before judging you," the judge told Lesage.

She has admitted strangling two of the infants and suffocating four others, according to judicial documents. The babies were born between 2000 and 2007.

Lesage told investigators that the father of five of the children was her ex-boyfriend, Pascal Catherine, who was detained for questioning after Lesage was arrested in 2007. She said the father of the sixth child was Luc Margueritte, the man who found the children's bodies, and a plaintiff in the case.

After Lesage, who also has a 14-year-old son, was arrested prosecutor Michel Garrandaux said she described giving birth to the first five alone in the apartment she shared with Catherine.

Garrandaux claimed Catherine was "far from unaware" of her pregnancies, but the investigation against him was dropped. He will testify as a witness tomorrow.

The prosecution says when Lesage and Catherine separated in 2006, Lesage moved in with Margueritte, taking the plastic bags to her new apartment.

The trial comes less than 12 months after a French woman was sentenced to eight years in prison for murdering three of her newborn children. Véronique Courjault burned one of the babies' bodies and stashed the other two corpses in a freezer, while she and her husband were living in South Korea.

During the trial psychiatrists testified that Courjault suffered from a psychological condition known as pregnancy denial, and family members pleaded for clemency on her behalf.

Germany saw a similar case in 2006 when Sabine Hilschenz killed eight of her newborn babies, burying them in flowerpots and a fish tank. She was found guilty of eight counts of manslaughter and jailed for 15 years.

• France

By Carmi Levy, Betanews

I risk being tagged a curmudgeon, but I'll say it anyway: 3D television isn't ready for prime time. It isn't ready for your living room, either (or any living room, frankly).

Headlines claiming 3D TV to be the greatest thing since the creation of 2D TV, are sadly more than a little hyperbolic, and I wish the industry would ease back on the PR push to get us to replace our still-new LCD and plasma televisions with 3D versions.

I know this comes as a bit of a disappointment for vendors like Samsung and Panasonic, which last week started selling 3D TVs through US retailers. But anyone who ponies up a triple-digit price premium for the right to wear goofy, overpriced glasses to watch content that doesn't exist yet and can't be broadcast over conventional distribution channels is, to put it gently, gullible.

Someday isn't here yet

Samsung, Panasonic, and other television vendors have been working themselves into a tizzy over 3D TV ever since this year's Consumer Electronics Show, where 3D TV was the darling. Unfortunately, they're all in for a very hard lesson. Despite the headlines, breathless press releases, and similarly breathless product reviews, 3D TV has no immediate future in the living room. That may very well change, someday, but it'll take a whole lot of evolution -- in technology, content and marketing -- before 3D makes the mainstream leap from movie theaters to living rooms. Here's why:

• No content. While a growing percentage of top-grossing movies over the past couple of years have been 3D, the vast majority of movies and virtually all televised content remain conventional 2D. While Avatar has used breakthrough 3D cinematography to become the most successful movie of all time, it's an exception to the rule. How many other movies really need the full-on 3D treatment?
• No distribution. If you want to watch a 3D movie, you're buying or renting a 3D Blu-ray disc. Current-generation cable or satellite-based distribution simply can't support the bandwidth required by a 3D broadcast. Will this change someday? Certainly, and for DirecTV customers, who may have access to a grand total of three 3D channels by June, soon. But for the rest of us, the best you can hope for is a half-resolution 3D signal from your television provider. And don't be surprised if you're charged a premium even for that half-baked "solution." Either way, if you do the math, your fancy new screen will be yesterday's news by the time the majority of distributors get with the 3D program...assuming they ever do.
• No affordability. Every new technology carries a significant premium, and 3D screens are no different. Samsung's $2,899 package for a 46-inch screen, two sets of glasses, and a Blu-ray player seems rich in a world awash with sub-$1,000 sets. Want more glasses? They're $250 a pop, a figure which will be inscribed into your brain the moment you discover your five-year-old has left them on the living room floor just as the dog sniffed around for something new to chew. Economies of scale will, as they always eventually do, bring prices down. But do you really want to wear special glasses every time you watch television? As technology advances and potentially (or hopefully) makes glasses unnecessary, will your expensive new acquisition even be compatible? Don't count on it.
• No relevance. 3D has been around in one form or another for decades. It's had more just-about-finally-almost-here moments than any technology deserves to have. Despite the fact that it's finally moving past its cheesy/campy movie past and becoming an accepted cinematographic tool, television is an entirely different ballgame. We don't watch TV like we watch movies. The typical TV viewing session isn't an event. Watching the local news, Stephen Colbert, or the mercifully last few episodes of Lost will never qualify as events, either. And I don't want to see my local weather dude in 3D any more than I want to feel as if I can touch Mr. Colbert as he faux-grills his guests. Although 3D adds some value to some admittedly limited forms of entertainment (such as movies), it adds patently none to the vast majority of today's televised content.

I understand the full-court press to move us all into 3D TV. Manufacturers are hurting. After spending most of the decade coaxing us out of our now all-but-gone CRT-based televisions and into bigger, flashier and, yes, more expensive LCD and plasma flat panels, they sat quietly by as we hunkered down though the recession. Now they want -- nay, need -- for us to have an entirely new reason to buy new stuff. There's always got to be a reason to drive the consumer need to replace things before their time. And if this year's reason doesn't take off, watch for next year's CES to carry an entirely different theme.

When my Betanews colleague Tim Conneally called it kids-stuff in an article last week, he was uncomfortably (for vendors) close to the truth. For all the novelty value of watching a 3D movie on a properly equipped home theatre, the realities of content and economics mean it'll be a long time before any of this is as routinely workable as regular old 2D HDTV is today.

Dreams don't always come true

In the ideal world, vendors announcing products based on radically new technologies would be greeted by thunderous applause and near-universal approval from rapturous consumers eager to spend whatever it takes to remain current. In the real world, however, announcements are rarely met with such unmitigated adulation. Buyers who have seen and heard it all before are growing tired of overly optimistic vendor claims, and are rightfully challenging them. In many cases, they're simply ignoring them outright.

That seems to be happening in my immediate circle of friends and colleagues, where no one has any plans to replace their current equipment with 3D anytime soon. Their universal conclusion -- which I share -- is it's too early, and too many additional pieces have to come into play before it becomes a reasonable and reasonably affordable choice for consumers. As hard as vendors have decided to push their 3D wares in 2010, they're dreaming in three-dimensional Technicolor if they think this is the year the mass television market moves beyond two dimensions.

Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Etc., Government/Legal, Videos, Nissan

Continue reading PSA: If you're going to attempt insurance fraud, you might want to avoid posting on YouTube [w/video]

PSA: If you're going to attempt insurance fraud, you might want to avoid posting on YouTube [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Men's desire for women to take their husband's surname tends to trump women's interest in any alternative solution

There's nothing wrong with a man saying that his wife should adopt his surname when they get married. While this is quite standard practice in Britain, the history of surnames is one of paternalism, discrimination, and the handling of women in a manner akin to property. Perhaps because of this, indignant feminist friends have recently forced me to defend my expressed preference for patrilinealism.

Britain ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination of All Forms Against Women on 7 April 1986, which states in Article 5(a) that we will "take all appropriate measures to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and custom based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes", and at Article 16(g) that we will ensure, "on a basis of equality of men and women, the same personal rights as husband and wife, including the right to choose a family name".

Surnames delineate both personal and group identities, and distinguish one Tom or Sarah from another. The value as an individual and family identifier is also common ground between the "retention of the maiden name" and "patrilineal" camps.

The Icelandic practice of referring to someone as the child of another – such as Magnus Magnusson – removes the intergenerational nature of names, which for some people is significant. You may be indifferent or embarrassed by your forebears, but many are distinctly interested in theirs. The Icelandic solution still requires choice between the name of the mother and the father.

It should be pushing at an open door to criticise under the banner of the Guardian the practice of hyphenating surnames. There are some beautiful hyphenated names, but where would it end? Twenty hyphens later, someone sensible is going to cut it back down. The practice is really best adopted by those with boring surnames, and even then it ought to be avoided.

Blending or inventing surnames, while useful for the witness protection programme, gives everyone a name which has no connection to their sense of self, or their perceived identity. Global companies and royal families may see the point, but a society in which everyone goes through three or more surnames is one which only serves to benefit the printers of business cards and the phone book, while frustrating genealogists and society at large.

A friend worries when she goes abroad that she'll be prevented from taking her daughters, who have her husband's surname. There's a problem contained in the maiden-name solution: if you're keen on the surname as a historical and familial identifier, why not share with your children a common family name? The family as a social group, despite inherent unpredictability and capacity for failure, is a powerful motivator, and we clearly try to form associations with the intention of them lasting.

The choice is whether to identify with our family of origin, or the family we are beginning. That choice should equally be faced by men. Straightforwardly, my bias is for the new family, the identification between adults and the children they raise being perhaps the most crucial element to this, as well as the collection of these people within the label of the family name.

While it's irrefutable that two people in a marriage are equal, they are still, typically, predisposed to have different priorities. As Germaine Greer wrote last week, "every new generation of women struggles to define itself ... There is no need for today's women to march to a 40-year-old feminist drum."

If, as Greer writes, change is a feminist issue, then it is also a masculist one. Men have typically displayed a preference for women taking their surname. While in theory the choice between the male and female surname is an equal one, the distribution of preferences is uneven. This may be based on characteristics that are intrinsically masculine flaws – pride, territorialism, a desire for family, even jealousy or possessiveness – but these traits are widespread, and to a great extent they may always be with us.

Even today, the numbers who adopt the man's surname as show that in most cases when this question has been addressed, the argument is won by men, but that doesn't have to mean we live in a male-dominated society. It seems to me that this is an issue that men have a firmer position on than women. Hillary Clinton was sufficiently concerned to drop "Rodham" when she was running for president, undoubtedly after sophisticated focus-grouping and polling data showed that this chimed with the great majority of female, as well as male, voters. In any sample of men and women, I expect you will typically find that men are more concerned that women take their surnames than women will be excited by the possibility of the alternatives.

There lies the justification for the practice: all other things being equal, and the alternative considered, masculists want this more than feminists don't.

• Marriage
• Women
• Family
• Relationships
• Gender
• Feminism
• Equality

Will Phillips, the Arkansan 11-year-old who made headlines earlier this year for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance in his school class until all U.S. citizens are treated equally, is the lead spokesman for National Equality March co-directors Robin McGehee and Kip Williams' new organization, GetEQUAL.

Visit GetEQUAL and sign their pledge here.

Phillips was also on hand at this weekend's GLAAD Media Awards in New York (hopefully we'll see the video of him on stage posted soon). Matthew Rettenmund of Boy Culture caught up with him for a moment on the red carpet.

GLAAD red carpet:

Hunch, the year-old decision-making site, has raised $12 million in a second round of funding led by Khosla Ventures. Co-founder Caterina Fake—who also founded (and sold) Flickr—provides details on her blog, saying that while the company had enough cash to last almost another year, “there was a lot of enthusiasm for our financing and we decided it was time to go turbo.”

Hunch, the year-old decision-making site, has raised $12 million in a second round of funding led by Khosla Ventures. Co-founder Caterina Fake—who also founded (and sold) Flickr—provides details on her blog, saying that while the company had enough cash to last almost another year, “there was a lot of enthusiasm for our financing and we decided it was time to go turbo.”

Recommendation engine Hunch confirms that they’ve raised a new round of financing – $12 million – led by Khosla Ventures. Partner Gideon Yu, who joined Khosla Ventures last year, was previously the CFO of Facebook. He is now joining Hunch’s board of directors as part of the deal. Hunch was valued at $52 million in the round.

I spoke to cofounder Caterina Fake this evening about the round. Fake says that Hunch, which is less than a year old, now has lots of data to work with in making recommendations. In fact, she says, users have answered nearly 50 million questions on Hunch since launch, and the company can use that data to make better and better recommendations.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales joined the company’s board of directors in late 2009.

With legions of mobile, tech-savvy individuals invading Austin, Texas for SXSW, Foursquare experienced an extraordinary day yesterday, recording a record-breaking 347,000 check-ins.

In response to the boom in usage, the developers added a new badge called Super Swarm. There was already a badge called Swarm; it was awarded when 50 people checked in at the same location at the same time. Super Swarm is achieved when 250 people check in.

Foursquare guru Harry H. said, “Know what you call a 50 person swarm at SXSW? The Hilton Lobby. So we upped the ante to 250 and you still nailed it. Well played!” So yes, the badge has already been won, but it’s not a zero-sum game; head to a huge event like SXSW and you might get it, too.

Foursquare just turned one year old a few days ago, and its usage has shot up over the past three months. Very worthy competitors like Gowalla and Yelp may be putting up a fight against it, but as far as check-ins are concerned, Foursquare is on top right now. Only time will tell if it stays that way.

Tags: android, blackberry, foursquare, iphone, News, sxsw, sxsw-2010

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