December 31, 2003
FBI Deems Almanac Users Safety Concern
Probable Cause?
December 30, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning the books could be used for terrorist planning.
In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs ''to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.''
It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.
A copy of the bulletin was obtained this week and its authenticity verified.
''For local law enforcement, it's just to help give them one more piece of information to raise their suspicions,'' said David Heyman, a terrorism expert for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. ''It helps make sure one more bad guy doesn't get away from a traffic stop, maybe gives police a little bit more reason to follow up on this.''
The FBI noted that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, ''the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities.''
---During weekly travels, I regularly consult my chicken-scrawled annotated copies of DeLorme's Atlases & Gazeteers and have done so for ten years. Should I now expect to be stopped & questioned by police?
December 30, 2003
Book: Digital Beauties
Almost real. Building women out of bits and bytes
Digital Beauties is the first worldwide printed reference for creations of female digital characters (and their variations) using computer graphics. Some artists are dedicated to fine art, some to producing cutting edge digital models for fashion, and others to creating virtual idols to appeal and interact with people. Their creators design virtual beauties to tell stories, entertain and excite...
Sunday morning. Lisa had a dream about Bob last night and can't wait to put her hands on him. She sits at the table, moves his body, rotates him, shifts around again and finally finds a comfortable position. She is just warming up. She downloads new underwear for him as well as some accessories. Bob doesn't talk, complain or show gratitude for anything. Lisa is ready to create her new masterpiece.
More Blurb-age/excerpts
Secret Service Airbrushes Aerial Photos
...the changes were made by EarthData International of Maryland, the company that took the aerial photos under contract with the U.S. Geological Survey, according to USGS, which commissioned the images for the National Aerial Photography Program, an ambitious multi-agency project to gather and organize high-resolution overhead imagery of the entire United States for scientific and cartographical use.
@
(Vice-President's Residence 2001/2002)
The Secret Service did not say what kind of threat accurate overhead imagery poses...analyst John Pescatore, a former Secret Service agent, says the image distortions could be a response to real, if unlikely, attack scenarios: like a homemade drone aircraft armed with explosives, remotely piloted by a terrorist using aerial photographs as a navigation aid. "There are actually good reasons, oddly enough," says Pescatore. "Some of them are very low probability things." Story w/links via: Security Focus News
Is the US Gov't Lying About Terrror Stats?
In October, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Christopher Wray, the Justice Department's criminal division chief, cited the growing number of charges resulting from terrorism probes — which then stood at 284 defendants — as evidence that the department has "enjoyed key successes" in the anti-terrorism war.
Last month, in a speech before a Justice Department liaison group for federal attorneys, Ashcroft cited terrorism-related criminal charges against 286 people, declaring "we have been successful."
But a (Los Angeles) Times review of a sampling of the cases behind the numbers, based in part on internal Justice documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, paints a more ambiguous picture.
Article w/Unknown News' links to related stories.
---Cook the books.
Military Morals
Commentary: 'Military Morals'
A gung-ho sort of military person might say to me, when I don't lavish them with praise, I'd better be thankful for the men who died for my"freedom."
I'd better? Or else what? What?
5.5 Nevada Quake Near Yucca Mtn. Nuclear Storage Hidden on USGS
Why?
The 5.5 EARTHQUAKE near nuclear repository site Yucca Mountain, NV, occurred on December 23, 2003. And the US gov't obviously shows its contempt for Americans by dropping the whole event down the scientific memory hole. However, other states reported it. How can Ameicans know just how risky Yucca Mountain (and nuclear power) is, if the government keeps them uninformed INTENTIONALLY? Article
---Meanwhie 'Moby' in the comments section noticed... (---Me too!)
If you look on a map that has indications of latitude and longitude, such as a Rand McNally road atlas, you'll see that the earthquake's location is near Winnemucca, NV, several hundred miles north of Yucca Mountain.
Monday's 6.5 earthquake near San Luis Obispo was about as close to Yucca Mountain as the 5.5 quake near Winnemucca and given the logarithmic scale used to measure quakes, a lot stronger.
I don't know why the USGS is not reporting the 5.5 quake, but I doubt Yucca Mountain has anything to do with it. Maybe there's something else going on in that remote location the government doesn't want to call attention to.
---Curious.
December 29, 2003
Chicago Police to Use Wires to Bust Gangs
"We're getting people to cooperate with us and wear wires. . . . You're going to see a whole lot more of that," said (Phil) Cline, who was named superintendent (of Police) in October.
In the past, the police almost exclusively used listening devices in drug cases.
"We want to use that same tactic, but toward murder cases and aggravated battery cases," said David Bayless, a police spokesman. "One way to get more of those wire cases is to get more informants. Someone may have a pending narcotics case, and they are helped by cooperating." Story
---By the way Chicago's Superintendent of Police Phil Cline, "thinks (street gangs) are a much more potent threat than the mob." Which means: A) The mob is NOT a gang.B) Chicago police won't be using wired-informants on mobsters.C) Mobsters are not subject to the same kind of law enforcement as street-bangers. D) People who buy their dope, place their bets/borrow money, get their willy's-waxed via mob-connected affliates will not be under Chicago Police scutiny. One wonders how the price of vice will be affected. Cynics might observe this new policy wil be helping the mob by eliminating their street competitors. Happy New Year Godfather?
Meat From Infected Cow Went to 8 States
Meat from a Holstein sick with mad cow disease has now reached retail markets in eight states and one territory, but still poses no health risk, Agriculture Department officials said Sunday.
Despite their assurances of food safety, federal officials have taken the precaution of recalling 10,000 pounds of meat from the infected cow and from 19 other cows slaughtered Dec. 9...
"The recalled meat represents essentially zero risk to consumers," said Petersen, of the USDA's food safety agency.
---I feel so much better now, and a bit peckish. (Wait) If there's no health risk, they're going through a lot of trouble, aren't they?
There's really nothing they can say now that doesn't sound like an outright lie at worst or self-serving at best. Maybe a video where we see a 'downer' cow stumbling around before it's slaughtered, barbacued and served up in real time to the President, Secretary of Agriculture, various Safeway and meat processing executives and their wives and kids...would instill a modicum of belief in the words of these people. That or a few weeks with no mention of "mad cow" in the news.
Advertising Age: The Advertising Century
In a 1941 essay in Life, Henry Luce famously called this "The American Century." To which we would add, it was also the Advertising Century, and the two remain intimately twined. Advertising played a key role in powering the miracle American economy of the past 50 years, and has had a profound impact -- for good and ill -- on our culture.
(link to)
Top 100 Campaigns
Top 100 People
Top 10 Jingles
Top 10 Slogans
Top 10 Ad Icons
Ad Century Essay
Timeline
The Advertising Century
Declassified Secrets from the U.S.-Iraq Relationship
Saddam a "presentable young man" with "engaging smile," Let's "do business," said British Embassy in 1969.
Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1984 with instructions to improve relations, Despite chemical weapons use and sanctuary for terrorists.
U.S. construction giant Bechtel planned to evade 1988 CW sanctions, Now has biggest AID contract for reconstructing Iraq.
New declassified documents reveal secret U.S.-British-Iraq history; Saddam Hussein Sourcebook published by National Security Archive.
---From the indispensible Saddam Hussein Sourcebook [via Wood's Lot].
@December 28, 2003
Saddam Standoff
Counterterrorism experts, CIA analysts and psychologists have come forward in a steady parade of over the past week with their views on how to put the squeeze on a man referred to by his interrogators as a "wise- ass" and a "jerk."
Deprive him of sleep, some suggest. Take away his bathroom privileges. Appeal to his ego by appearing to show him respect.
Bring in an Arabic speaker who could get him to let down his guard.
Show him videotapes of anti-Saddam protests or the unearthing of mass graves.
Humiliate him by allowing a woman to interrogate him.
Use the old good cop/bad cop routine. Keep the lights on.
Play loud obnoxious music, the type used against former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.
Threaten to send him to Iran or Kuwait for interrogation.
Show him false newspaper headlines celebrating his capture at home.
There was even talk of administering sodium pentothal, the so-called "truth serum."
"I have no idea what they're going to do, but we do not torture," Bush said in an ABC television interview last week.
Saddam's exact location has not been disclosed — it is believed to be near Baghdad International Airport — but he is almost certainly being held under constant surveillance in a room without windows, unsure whether it is day or night.
He is likely to be hooded during questioning, again in a bid to disrupt his conception of time and space.
Despite his pathetic demeanour when captured, Saddam has so far remained alternately defiant and flippant with his CIA captors, reports say...
Wayne Simmons, a former CIA interrogator, told the Fox News network that Saddam's captors will try to befriend their prisoner and never let personal emotions interfere with the job at hand.
"This is the hard drive," Simmons said. "This is an interrogator's dream. It's very rare that we ever get the hard drive. We get the floppy disks. And we have to piece them together and find out what's going on.
"One thing that we won't do with Saddam Hussein, I can assure you, is we will not take a sledgehammer to the hard drive.
"It make no sense to try to beat this guy up and try to intimidate him to get intelligence out of this man who holds virtually every secret from Iraq for the last 35 years."...
Kelly McCann, a counterterrorism expert with the U.S. Marine Corps, says it should come as no surprise that Saddam has used sarcasm in dealing with his captors...
In one of the more remarkable findings, a CNN/USA Today poll taken by Gallup after the capture showed that more than half of those polled — 53 per cent — now think Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on American soil. Before his capture, only 43 per cent believed that...
---Amazing fiction, with presumably real people uttering fantastic quotes: "But it is important not to be coercive, because this must be done properly in the glare of international scrutiny." If items on that list above are not coercive, are examples of what they do in the glare of international scrutiny, I wonder what happens to prisoners when things don't need to be done properly? I wonder about the journalists who let the experts pretend nothing inhumane is going on.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mused aloud on the possibility of bargaining with Saddam for information in the face of the death penalty, because the fugitive clearly wants to live.
But (Jerrold) Post (director of the political psychology program at George Washington University) believes that Saddam, once past the humiliation of capture, would be most severely punished by languishing in leg shackles for the rest of his life.
"I have no idea what they're going to do, but we do not torture," Bush said in an ABC television interview last week
---Counterterrrorism expert on sarcasm? WMS-Weapons of Mass Sarcasm. If sarcasm is a terrorist's ploy, irony is a dirty bomb?
The powerful and their people say the darnedest things.
@Pentagon Evacuated: U.S. Prepares for Devastating Attack
Top US military and defence department leaders were evacuated from the Pentagon this week and taken to secret command bunkers around America in an unusual exercise simulating a catastrophic terrorist attack on Washington, DC.
The so-called continuity of government drill, which did not involve Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, came as mobile anti-aircraft missile batteries were deployed around the capital, and possibly New York.
---Not many news sources picked up on the evacuation of the pentagon/continuity of government drill. Via Google News Search: here's the other report. Bunker down.
December 27, 2003
Ultraviolet Photograph in Color
by FumioSome of insects can feel ultraviolet light as a color, those color feeling is dream in dream for our human being. This web site present the patterns that the insects may feel with their sight.
ALSO:
Four separate images are taken on B&W film or captured with a greyscale digital camera through RED (25), GREEN (58), BLUE (47) and ULTRAVIOLET (403) transmitting filters. The images are recombined into RED-GREEN-BLUE color channels in Adobe Photoshop. The images created from the RED-GREEN-BLUE filters appear as natural as those obtained on color film or a color digital camera. The image from the GREEN-BLUE-ULTRAVIOLET filters are interesting false-color renditions incorporating the ultraviolet image.
If a color digital camera is used, only two images are taken, one unfiltered and another through the UV-transmitting filter. The RED-GREEN-BLUE images can be extracted from the unfiltered color image using the "split channels" function in PhotoShop.
Techniques of Color Ultraviolet Photography
All You Ever Wanted to Know About Digital UV & IR Photography...
McMadness?
@---They couldn't wait a day or two? Or as Lord Bofingham (above) put it, "Ta, what a splendid Xmas present."
Also: USDA Refused to Release Mad Cow Records ...for six months the agency repeatedly refused to release its tests for mad cow to United Press International.
The USDA claims to have tested approximately 20,000 cows for the disease in 2002 and 2003, but has been unable to provide any documentation in support of this to UPI, which first requested the information in July.
---Someone from Economic Democracy.org posted this thread on Google Groups. It includes the full text of the above article plus comments: for example, American beef isn't tested in the same way as European beef, cow blood is still being fed to calves; suggests why USDA released the news at Christmastime and supplies links to Organic Consumers.org for updates.
---Atom Grid had this to say about the USDA's Records story:
"On Christmas Day we had steak (the market was out of duck). Yesterday and today I ate hamburgers (on the road). In fact, I ate one of the hamburgers WHILE READING a story about Mad Cow in a newspaper. I'm a mutant.
But when I read that W was making a huge show of eating a hamburger in front of the press, I immediately knew the contamination is far worse than what's been reported..."
December 26, 2003
"Vegetarian Virgin" Ad Riles Boston Church
JesusVeg.comThe Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has demanded the removal of an animal rights group's billboard advertisement depicting the Virgin Mary cradling a lifeless chicken in her arms.
The ad by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) features the tagline "Go Vegetarian - It's an Immaculate Conception," a reference to teachings about Mary's purity.
But the church said the billboard was "offensive at any time" and especially so during the Christmas season.
"Why any organisation would seek to garner goodwill for itself and its message by promoting an ad campaign that is so offensive to a large number of people within the community is unclear," the archdiocese said in a statement.
"What is clear is that if PETA truly cares about ethical behaviour, the billboard message should be taken down as soon as possible," it added.
PETA said it has no plans to take down the billboard in Boston.
---Is the image of the Virgin Mary a trademark? Like Mickey Mouse?
Straight Outta Tikrit
Psyops
From a rap song set to the tune of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” broadcast in April 2003 in Iraq by Radio Tikrit, a station believed to be backed by the CIA. A Saddam Hussein impersonator performs most of the song in English with occasional Arabic interludes.
Lyrics via: Harper's.org
You'll Blush When You Flush in the Loo With A View
...the artist, Monica Bonvicini...of Don't Miss a Sec...constructed a rectangular box whose walls are the sort of thick mirrored glass used on limousines or in police interview rooms.
Inside, it has a simple prison-issue toilet and sink that, when used, inspire a strangely peaceful notion that you are separate from the world, but part of it, too. With your pants off. "When you use it, it seems like you're sitting in the open air," says Vicky Thornton, the project architect for the huge construction site at the Chelsea College of Art, where the bathroom has been placed.
She found the experience unexpectedly liberating. "I didn't feel like I was exhibiting myself, but I felt like that's what it would be like if you didn't have to wear any clothes."
“I closed the door and the space suddenly expanded. The walls fell away. I was standing in the lavatory as wide as the world. You try relieving yourself in such circumstances. Never before has a bottom felt so bare, or so big.”
See also Monica Bonvicini's Anxiety Attack
December 25, 2003
@Police Call for Remote Button to Stop Cars
---Do a Google News Search using "police chase"... (Then wonder what happens when towing services get a hold of these gadgets?)
December 24, 2003
Lenny Bruce Pardoned for 4-Letter Offense
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Long after four-letter words in standup comedy lost their ability to shock, Lenny Bruce - whose foul-mouthed rants started the trend - was posthumously pardoned Tuesday for his 1964 obscenity conviction.
---Lenny Bruce died like many junkie police informants, from a hot-shot. In all fairness shouldn't Bruce be posthumously charged with heroin possession?
Saudi Ban...
Saudi Arabia has banned imports of female dolls and teddy bears, and shopkeepers have been given three months to dispose of any stock. The ban also applies to non-Islamic religious symbols, such as crosses and statues of the Buddha.
Fashion models in the country have also been told that they must not display "shapely" figures.
---They're throwing the 'fundies' a bone? Don't know yet if the crucifixed & Barbies along with disobedient shopkeepers can eventually expect to be arrested.
RFID Tags Can Improve Food Safety
---Missing kids will still be featured on milk cartons, but soon someone will know where each & every carton has gone.
(British) Intelligence Experts Question Maturity of Biometrics Technology
Leaked document raises questions about viability of biometrics for ID cards.
...the technology is 'inherently not secret.'
According to insiders... privately advising, biometrics is still an unreliable technology and it would be best to wait for three years for it to mature.
The government this week (of Dec.16, 2003) launched a six month trial of biometric systems. The UK Passport Service will test facial, iris and fingerprint recording and recognition. Some 10,000 volunteers will receive a personalised smart card carrying printed and electronic information.
"HiEnergy" Landmine Detector to be Tested by US Army
HiEnergy's False Alarm Eliminator is placed just above a flagged spot
identified as a suspected landmine by metal detectors or ground penetrating
radar. HiEnergy's landmine detector then sends a beam of fast neutrons
towards the targeted area and receives the resulting gamma rays to reveal
whether the targeted area contains an explosive. This technology would be the
world's first confirmation sensor that determines the existence of buried
explosives.
Typically, 1 out of 400 - 800 flagged areas turn out to contain a real
mine; the rest are "false alarms" consisting of shrapnel, nails, wire, bullets
and other metallic objects. The half-life span of the de-miners is 5 years --
that is, one-half of them get hurt or killed within 5 years. The most
experienced ones are the most frequent victims because they become less
cautious with time.
HiEnergy Technologies, Inc. has developed patent pending Stoichiometer(TM)
explosive detection technology that remotely determines the chemical formula
of concealed substances, including explosives, biological weapons, and illegal
drugs through barriers in a short period of time.
December 23, 2003
Smile
what would it look like taking 1 picture, every 30 minutes, every hour, for 24 hours, 7 days a week, for 3 weeks, no matter what? Phillip Torrone did just that on a trip to Tokyo and Shanghai. (via saturation).
New Tradition
As Las Vegas makes inroads toward a Christmas tradition... one of the key issues is tone...
Susan Anton says you've got to set the mood right away. She borrows Springsteen's arrangement of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" to let the audience know "it's a Christmas show, but we're not all coming out with candy canes and sitting here with Christmas stockings on our head."
Anton's Christmas show...also veers off the beaten path to offer more personal selections, such as Beth Nielsen Chapman's "Years" or Lennon's "Imagine."*
Those are the songs that can "provoke those better senses of us as people," she says. "Christmas is the one time of year we allow ourselves to get close to those feelings that are tender within us."
...Kenny Rogers' "Christmas From the Heart featuring `The Toy Shoppe' " is the area debut of another theatrical format, with the second act featuring the veteran showman as a toy shop owner who gets help from an angel when he is unable to pay his bills...
"Chippendales: The Show," issued a press released headlined, "Ladies Get Opportunity to Sit on Studly Santa's Lap for Charity this Holiday Season," with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation benefitting from visits to "our chiseled Kris Kringle."
---Las Vegas, where you can test your faith in a higher power for as long as your money and your marker hold out.
*Lennon wrote a Christmas song. I wonder if the Vegas audiences would appreciate it's sentiment.
U.S. Rarely Seeks Charges for Deaths in Workplace
Every one of their deaths was a potential crime. Workers decapitated on assembly lines, shredded in machinery, burned beyond recognition, electrocuted, buried alive all of them killed, investigators concluded, because their employers willfully violated workplace safety laws...
(By DAVID BARSTOW; originally published: December 22, 2003; the New York Times)
via: Reenhead
---File this under: "What's a government for?"
Hell in a Cloud Over the Midwestern US
IF you think this page is a lie ... so be it.. i know it is the truth.. as much as i could find from filtering and enhancing the photo of the UFO CLOUD OVER KLAMATH FALL,OREGON..... what i found is amazing and horrifying.. and exemplifies your worst nightmares.. this is a snake-lizard-satanic ship.. with all the accoutrements of TERROR...Site w/more photos and warnings.
via: Dustbunny at Psychoceramics
---I don't know how he got from the above image to this but I think I go through a similar process when goofing around with music samples.
Have Yourself a Pentagon Christmas
...if you'd really like to "wow" the kids, stick to Tomdispatch's list of "Hot as Depleted Uranium Toys for a New Imperial Age."
You surely don't want to deny your child the right to strut an aircraft-carrier flight deck or duke it out in person with Osama bin Laden. So from the Pentagon to you, via us, comes the A (for "Armed to the Teeth") list of presents sure to make this a true military-industrial Christmas!
Article w/links to games, toys & more!
via: Unknown News
December 22, 2003
Indications Saddam Was Not in Hiding but a Captive
6. The hole had only one opening. It was not only camouflaged with mud and bricks – it was blocked. He could not have climbed out without someone on the outside removing the covering.
7. And most important, $750,000 in 100-dollar notes were found with him (a pittance for his captors who expected a $25m reward)– but no communications equipment of any kind, whether cell phone or even a carrier pigeon for contacting the outside world.
According to DEBKAfile analysts, these seven anomalies point to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein was not in hiding; he was a prisoner.
After his last audiotaped message was delivered and aired over al Arabiya TV on Sunday November 16, on the occasion of Ramadan, Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more, which would have accounted for his appearance and condition. Meanwhile, his captors bargained for the $25 m prize the Americans promised for information leading to his capture alive or dead. The negotiations were mediated by Jalal Talabani’s Kurdish PUK militia.
These circumstances would explain the ex-ruler’s docility – described by Lt.Gen. Ricardo Sanchez as “resignation” – in the face of his capture by US forces. He must have regarded them as his rescuers and would have greeted them with relief. Story
Deployed in the U.S.A.: The Creeping Militarization of the Home Front
As its overwhelming victories in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated, the U.S. military is the most effective fighting force in human history. It is so effective, in fact, that many government officials are now anxious for the military to assume a more active policing role here at home.
Deploying troops on the home front is very different from waging war abroad. Soldiers are trained to kill, whereas civilian peace officers are trained to respect constitutional rights and to use force only as a last resort...
...the same training that makes soldiers out-standing warriors makes them extremely dangerous as police officers. Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, put it succinctly: the military “is trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.”
That fundamental distinction explains why Americans have long resisted the use of standing armies to keep the domestic peace.
Executive Summary with link to this Policy Analysis: a 22 page PDF file.
---I hadn't known how ubiquitous the military presence was in American law enforcement. I understand cops like to dress and behave like commandoes, I didn't know police so often used military advisers. (How DID those tanks get to Waco?)
Are we gonna have turf wars between local cops and federal special forces? Near my town there's a thriving stolen car-parts business (since 1948!) which dozens of local jurisdictions seem powerless to stop. Will the federales want in on that operation? How about prostitution? Gambling? Drugs? What about all the legitimate businesses that exist because of these locally managed services? How about the politicians, who owe so much to their ignorance of these crimes without victims; the trusted relationships between the suckers and the sucked, informers and informed, the bought and the sold, which took years/generations to nurture and cultivate? Fortunes can be lost, families wiped out, local heroes marched into the light of day and disgraced; talk about a Revolution in Military Affairs.
"Deployed in the U.S.A." gives a good historical view, fully referenced, of 'military actions' on American soil. It's recommendations, for example, the demilitarization of the drug war, emphasize how far America's military prowess has invaded civilian life.
Technology's Impact on Border Scutinized
With deadlines fast approaching, the Department of Homeland Security is racing to work out details of a hugely ambitious effort to use biometric technology to track foreigners entering and leaving the country.
Spending just a few more seconds on inspections can create huge bottlenecks. If agents in Blaine, Wash., took an extra nine seconds to examine each driver, the peak waiting time would jump to 13 hours from the current two hours, according to Homeland Security figures cited by the GAO...
---Funniest thing I read all week.
December 21, 2003
'Smart' Highways (Sensors) Could Warn Drivers of Dangers
Federal regulators approved a step Wednesday toward developing smart highways, where warning signals automatically transmitted to drivers can prevent traffic accidents.
The Federal Communications Commission set aside an area of broadcast spectrum to transmit those signals, rather than have them share space with electronic toll sensors, cell phones and garage door openers.
---Then your car's black box can record each 'close call' and one's insurance payments will be adjusted accordingly. Safety isn't free.
@December 20, 2003
The Abduction of Modernity
The Race Towards Barbarism
"In the history of human progress, willful rejection of many technological inventions is traceable to cultural preference. This is the basis for concluding that the technological militarism of the West is of barbaric roots and that a civilization built on military power remains barbaric, the reverse of modernity, notwithstanding the guise of technology."
Silver Cars Safer: NZ Study
That was the conclusion of a team of New Zealand researchers, who found in a two-year study that people are less likely to suffer serious injuries in road accidents if they drive a silver vehicle.
Even when the figures were adjusted to take into account the driver's age, sex, alcohol consumption, seat-belt use, vehicle age and road condition, the study concluded there was a significant reduction in risk of injury in silver cars. Item
---New Zealand's a green, wet, Northwest US/BC Canada, kind of place? I wonder if silver works the same in glaring LA smog, rustbelt industrial 'fog' or under desert skies?
'Skunk' Spray Clears Buildings of Bad Elements
L.A. county sheriff's deputies say prostitutes, drug dealers can't take odor
By Chris Dixon, New York Times
COMPTON -- A small posse of sheriff's deputies in Compton has unleashed a new weapon in the war on crime.
It is remarkably small, improbably inexpensive, stunningly low-tech and for the last seven months has proved incredibly effective. So effective, in fact, that Lt. Shaun Mathers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department wonders why more departments have not realized that such a tool might be right under their noses.
"I was kind of grousing with some friends," he said. "What could we do to make our officers more visible in the community? And someone said, 'Maybe we could use a good odor, like fresh baked cookies.' As I was driving home, it struck me. Maybe there's a value in a bad odor."
...After a few experiments with chemical stink bombs, he and Deputy Scott Gage found a petroleum-based gel called SkunkShot on the Internet. "It's pretty weird," Gage said, "but it's brilliant."
And the Skunk Squad was born... Story
---Good fences make good neighbors? It's easier to secure spaces then to deal with people.
Did I detect in the above examples cops taking for granted the passivity of the homeless? What's to stop THEM from doing likewise to the favorite haunts of the police. Soon being in the presence of a police officer as or with a source of bad odors will be considered a felony.
December 19, 2003
NIPS 'N' TUCKS: Sharon Osbourne, back in England helping nurse hubby Ozzy Osbourne back to health, has never been shy about personal matters. That's probably why she itemized the $350,000 she says she's spent on plastic surgery over the years. Item
---I don't think she was in an accident. A fire? I can't watch her program. I've a phobia about people holding pets, women in fur stoles, ventriloquists & their dummies. I wonder if she got her money's worth? You've heard the old joke: "You look like a million bucks; all green and wrinkly"?
Israelis Planned to Kill Saddam in 1992
The Israeli military planned a daring assassination attempt against Saddam Hussein in 1992 by landing commandos in Iraq and firing sophisticated missiles at him during a funeral.
The commandos would set up a few miles from the cemetery and fire two specially-designed missiles that would home in on Saddam, who wore a lighter colour military uniform from other soldiers...
The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot said commandos would be flown into Iraq and split into two groups. The advance unit would head to the Saddam family cemetery outside Tikrit, and a second group would deploy eight miles away.
The front unit would watch the funeral from 150 yards away, and signal to the soldiers further back to fire a barrage of missiles on Saddam, Yediot reporter Ronen Bergman said. The custom-made missiles were named ''Obelisk,'' the Maariv daily said.
The soldiers would have fired a specially adapted "smart" missile with a small camera in its nose, allowing them to target Saddam amid a crowd of officials, family members and bodyguards attending the funeral.
The training accident occurred during one of the final run-throughs on November 5, 1992, at the large Tzeelim training base in the southern Negev desert.
The five soldiers, also members of the elite unit, were playing the part of the targets, Saddam Hussein and his bodyguards, and the commandos were to fire a dummy missile at them. By mistake, a live missile was substituted, and the five were killed. Six others were wounded.
(Nadav) Zeevi (an Israeli Intelligence Officer, at the time) said he had proposed something more modest -- perhaps remote-controlled bombs that would be detonated as Saddam reached the cemetery.
''The generals, for their own reasons, pushed for more, for something with missiles and bang-bang and helicopters, something more like the Entebbe operation, something with a lot more action,'' Zeevi said.
---The above was culled from three sources: one newspaper gave a good quote and details of how the commandoes were positioned. Another mentioned the commadoes were playing as targets; (I was guessing the Israelis killed their men while testing with a live missile which went haywire by 150 yards. Not by accidentally substituting an armed missile). One paper gave the description of the missile with the camera, always good for image fans to know.
December 18, 2003
Websites of the Day: If you want to find out why Bush will win in 2004...
... just look at these:
Joe 2004: It escapes me why Bush's inofficial vice president even pretends he wants the job.
Daily Kos: Apparently, very popular in "Democrat" circles. They basically point out all of Bush' problems. And their solution to it all is either to rant or to stare at polls as if polls were some sort of modern day oracle. Did you see the latest NH poll? Bad news for Kerry!
Talking Points Memo represents everything that is wrong with the Democrat party. If you want to know what it is just read that stuff. It's this mix between supporting things like the Iraq War, trying to act so dignified and smart that no solutions for problems are delivered, and simply ignoring real problems with the claim that even bringing those up would be too much to the left.
'Corner Shot'
CornerShot.com
Corner Shot(TM), a weapon system that provides the ability to observe and engage a target from behind a corner, was officially unveiled today (12/16/03) in Israel. Corner Shot enables security forces to completely protect themselves from the line of fire when shooting a target. The system was invented by Amos Golan and developed together with Asaf Nadel, both senior former combat and special units officers.
Corner Shot is a highly technological system that attaches to most handguns currently used by Special Forces, for example the GLOCK, SIG SAUER, CZ, BERETTA or any other handgun. It includes a small, high-resolution camera and monitor, which can observe and view a target from various vantage points. The detachable video camera enables forces to scan an area prior to pinpointing a target and broadcast the footage directly, in real time, to the operating team behind, or to a monitor at Command Post in the rear.
Corner Shot can be accurately deployed from behind any cover since the operator can view and aim via the LCD monitor which is fixed on the back of the Corner Shot...
Press Release
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