suggestions, anyone?

Good morning,
I've had an incredibly frustrating hour and a half simply trying to scan an illustration from a book and get it sized and oriented correctly. So I'm in no mood to be nice to computers.

From the book I most recently finished, "Inventing Women: Science, Technology and Gender" (Kirkup, Gill and Laurie Smith Keller (eds.), 1992. London: The Open University), a paragraph on computers and the military. I'd always noticed it at microsoft (the war teams, the triage, the windows guy who was an israeli tank commander), but I hadn't actually paid attention to the language of computing itself. The author, in this case Gill Kirkup in a short article titled "The social construction of computers: hammers or harpsichords?", points out the importance of military needs in determining developments in computers, then goes on to say,
"Unfortunately the language and imagery of computing retains an association with its military origins even when it is being used outside that context. Terms like 'crash', 'abort', 'terminate', 'kill', 'execute', 'violate', 'penetrate', 'degrade', 'disable' are part of a discourse which is deeply implicated with aggression and militarism."


On a lighter note, all hail rock climbing! I have found 'evidence' that it makes other people happy too. An academic whose name is Csikzentmihalyi did research on what makes people fell good. He talks about a sense of "flow" (people usually call it 'the zone' though), an experience where the person feels no more self-consciousness, no sense of time, is in total concentration. And he uses rock climbing as the perfect example. (This is from a book called "Lean Thinking: banish waste and create wealth in your corporation" by Womack and Johnsen).


Finally, suggestions anyone? I had a talk with my dissertation supervisor who happily noted that I had enough interest to cover 50 PhD dissertations. Given that I need to perform 1 small MPhil dissertation, I need to scope it down but remain interested. please send suggestions !