January 31, 2004
R. Kelly's Lawyers Want Photos Suppressed
Kelly's attorney, Ron Toward, argued prosecutors shouldn't be allowed to use pictures found on a digital camera in Kelly's Davenport home, about 35 miles southwest of Orlando (Florida). Authorities say they show Kelly engaged in sexual activity with a minor.
Using a warrant to search for drugs, a Polk County Sheriff's detective found a camera, wrapped in a towel, inside a duffel bag. Police later got a warrant to search for child pornography.
But Toward argued in last week's motion that Detective Robert Mateo didn't mention in his probable cause affidavit for a child pornography search warrant that he'd already seen the pictures.
Mateo explained that he looked at the pictures during his drug search.
"I wasn't looking for pornographic pictures on the camera," Mateo said in a September deposition.
"It's been my experience that people who use narcotics tend to take pictures of themselves using narcotics," Mateo said. "It's a strange phenomenon, but it happens all the time."
---On the internet, I haven't seen any photo galleries of people using narcotics. One might think such images would be collectible, fetish-objects.
U.S. Military 'Sure of Catching' Bin Laden This Year
Story via: The Monster Limo weblog
---Is it treasonous to conjecture that the U.S. Military will be unable to find Bin Laben until after the Republican Convention in July?
Get In Touch & Vote
New voting equipment being tested
A vote with the touch-screen equipment begins when an election worker slides a cartridge into the machine. A list of candidates appears. The voter makes a selection by touching the name of a candidate. That candidate's name then lights up.
The voter advances to the next screen by touching "Next Page" at the bottom of the screen.
When the voter finishes, he is shown a list of candidates he selected. If he wants to change a vote, he can go back and do so. A vote for a candidate can be removed by touching that candidate's name again.
A voter's final decisions are locked in when he presses a red "vote" button at the top of the screen.
Sight-impaired voters use a headset, which is plugged into the machine. The machine will read the candidates' names to the voter, who makes selections with the help of braille buttons beneath the computer screen.
"I think they'll be fabulous. Less chance of error, quicker counting, no hanging chads," Evansville (Indiana) resident William Taylor Jr. said after sampling a machine on display at Schnucks (grocery store)...
Election Systems & Software, the company that sold new computerized voting machines to Vanderbrugh County, has come under fire by the Indiana Election Commission for giving at least three counties touch-screen equipment that had not been certified as accurate and approved for use in Indiana.
The same firm also gave Marion County uncertified equipment to count absentee ballots, forcing hand counts of thousands of ballots and delaying election results.
---By the way Google News Search this week (1/30/04) has more than 450 news stories on "touch screen voting".
January 30, 2004
A Sensor that Knows How You Feel
Sandia National Laboratories has developed a prototype of a computer system that can monitor your heart rate, pulse, temperature, and gestures. Tiny sensors and transmitters, dangling from a wrist or a helmet, would collect information about your well-being and send it to a database where it can be analyzed and then instantaneously fed back to you via computer voice-reader...
Q: So, can you explain how this system would work?
A: Everyone will have what we call a Pal, a device with which you control what kind of information the group knows about you. The information that you allow to be shared goes into a system we call Mentor. During a meeting, Mentor will develop a performance map of you and your behavior, and link you to people in your group.
Let's look at the possibility that there's a combat station somewhere across the world, with a 12-hour time difference from the command center back in the U.S. This system could help the commander to understand more about the people who are on the front lines: their stress level, degree of fatigue, or excitement about something. That may influence the leader's decisions regarding assignments and other things.
Q: O.K., but what's the value of this technology in situations when all of the discussion participants are in the same room?
A: If the leader is able to tell naturally if someone is fatigued, or distracted, or doing very well that day and should be given additional responsibility, we're all for that. But we'd like to develop systems that can support people who maybe don't have the abilities that natural leaders do -- or that can enable someone to be even a better leader than they were before. ..
Press Release See also: Mood Ring Measured in Megahertz
---On the other end of the social scale "Pal" could be used for 24/7 monitoring/"Mentoring" of criminal-types. One's elevated (or depressed for certain substance abusers) heart rate may signal a parole violation.
"Pal" can be fitted with l.e.d.'s that'll glow in the presence of desirable others.
Athletic competitions incorporate PAL whose maximum or minimum readings decide the winners.
PAL as a 'chasity belt' for suspicious spouses? Worried mentoring parents?
Celebrities can internet/cable/telephone "Pal"'s real-time readings to fans who in turn "Mentor" the activities of their stars' days & nights.
PAL as the final objective arbitrator on whether or not you can (still) do the job. Insurance companies, personnel managers and the doctors in their employ as Pal's and your 'Mentors', no need for a physical.
Could PAL be utilized by "weight loss plans"? AA? Hign school sport's training programs?
Pal will become the ultimate in 'medic alert'. Sick & elderly people of means would subscribe tomorrow to a service that could guarantee an emergency response within seconds of sensed trouble. Think of the lives saved of those at risk.
We can all be like astronauts, with "Houstons" of our, the state's, our employers or our insurer's choosing. ("Houston, we have a problem.")
The Bush Adminstration's Views on the Future of Nuclear Weapons
Interview with NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks
(Q.)...what are the priority areas that you’re looking to move ahead on?
Brooks (of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration): Well, I think there are several. First, there is the completion of the various tools that are part of the Stockpile Stewardship. The most obvious is the National Ignition Facility (NIF). We won’t complete it in the next two years, but we will continue to move forward. It’s already the most powerful laser in the world at four percent of its ultimate capability. But it is very, very important because it’s the closest we can come to duplicating on a very small scale the physical phenomena involved in nuclear burn. Similarly, the ATLAS facility, which we’re reassembling in Nevada. Similarly, the dual axis hydro-test facility, or hydro-test device, in Los Alamos. So, that’s the first broad group of things, and that’s clearly where the most money is...to continue the transformation of the nuclear weapons business from an empirical art to a theoretical science.
...you have to understand that the people who say that the use of nuclear weapons would have severe consequences are right—they’re right politically, and they’re right physically, and they’re right in terms of collateral damage. But it’s also true that there is a substantial difference between relatively low collateral damage and very high collateral damage...
---Mr. Brooks is proud of their "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator"; as any man would be proud.
When lunatics are running the asylum...
... things get pretty grotesque:
"Compare an American taxpayer's situation today with that of a 19th century American slave. Not all slaves worked on cotton plantations. Some with marketable skills were leased to businesses or released to labor markets, where they worked for money wages. Just like the wages of today's taxpayer, a portion of the slave's money wages was withheld. In those days the private owner, not the government, received the withheld portion of the slave's wages.
"Slaves in that situation were as free as today's American taxpayer to choose their housing from the available stock, purchase their food and clothing, and entertain themselves.
"In fact, they were freer than today's American taxpayer. By hard work and thrift, they could save enough to purchase their freedom." (my emphasis)
written by Paul Craig Roberts
The future for fake and farcical war propaganda...
"... is quite bright indeed."
Greg Palast dissects the yesterday's whitewash in London
January 29, 2004
Roll-Up E-Newspaper?
E Ink, a private company with about 60 employees, has developed an electronic ink system consisting of thousands of tiny capsules the diameter of a human hair.
Those capsules each contain small particles, some white, some
black. An electric current can separate those particles.
"Like a Magic 8 Ball, one of those colors rises to the top," Bischoff said. Based on the data fed to each capsule, the pixelated display can reproduce text or gray-scaled photographs.
This year, Philips and E Ink plan to introduce small, rigid screens made of glass that use the electronic ink technology. But by 2005, Philips announced yesterday, a flexible plastic model will be ready for commercial sales.
The device itself may be very cheap - only $10 a sheet. But consumers would pay to download the latest issue of a magazine, a newspaper or perhaps even this story, using a cell phone hook-up. Item
See also Wired's: E-Ink: Your Hands Will Thank You for more/links.
Nothin' Fancy
Remarks by the President to the Press Pool
Nothin' Fancy Cafe
Roswell, New Mexico
11:25 A.M. MST
THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.
Q Mr. President, how are you?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm hungry and I'm going to order some ribs.
Q What would you like?
THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you think I'd like.
Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you simply haven't spent enough to keep the country secure.
THE PRESIDENT: My job is to secure the homeland and that's exactly what we're going to do. But I'm here to take somebody's order. That would be you, Stretch -- what would you like? Put some of your high-priced money right here to try to help the local economy. You get paid a lot of money, you ought to be buying some food here. It's part of how the economy grows. You've got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat?
Q Right behind you, whatever you order.
THE PRESIDENT: I'm ordering ribs. David, do you need a rib?
Q But Mr. President --
THE PRESIDENT: Stretch, thank you, this is not a press conference. This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady's business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?
Q What do you think of the democratic field, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: See, his job is to ask questions, he thinks my job is to answer every question he asks. I'm here to help this restaurant by buying some food. Terry, would you like something?
Q An answer.
Q Can we buy some questions?
THE PRESIDENT: Obviously these people -- they make a lot of money and they're not going to spend much. I'm not saying they're overpaid, they're just not spending any money.
Q Do you think it's all going to come down to national security, sir, this election?
THE PRESIDENT: One of the things David does, he asks a lot of questions, and they're good, generally.
END 11:29 A.M. MST
-- As seen in WhiteHouse.gov's press releases via Rob's blog and elsewhere.
Does the American Election Matter?
Most liberals, like most conservatives in America, have a remarkable indifference about what happens to the world, so long as it doesn't affect their enjoyment of life. It is a disturbing orientation for people who, secretly or overtly, regard themselves as divinely-anointed planetary overseers.
The American Congress is so conservative, and has demonstrated itself so lacking in courage or imagination or largeness of view, that only the most modest changes can be expected under any president.
Article by John Chuckman
---What does he know? He's a freaking Kiwi! New Zealand's like British Columbia but without the marijuana. (That said, 'largesse' is one of my favorite words.)
Trauma And
Those traumatized (in childhood or as an adult) have a long list of
symptomatic behaviors -- including a magnified "startle effect", fear
of attack, unique fear of specific sounds, willingness to explode in
rage, tendency to externalize blame onto hated others, belief in or
search for a divine presence in their lives, excessive need for order
in their surroundings, an intense energizing arousal to unique
interests or frights and so many others.
Traumatized groups have the same symptoms...
---Wouldn''t you like to be a Pepper too?
Swedes Have More & More Animal Sex
Animal sex is not illegal in Sweden, and every year between 200 and 300 pets are injured because of sexual assaults.
“We have seen an increase since 1999 when child pornography became illegal,” said Johan Beck-Friis (of Svenska Veterinärforbundet, the Swedish veterinary organization), “It appears, in other words, as there are some people who have replaced children with animals. In both circumstances, it is sex with defenceless individuals.”
The fact that animal sex is becoming an increasing problem can be indicated by the mere fact that there is an increasing selection of animal porn at video rentals and there an increasingly number of websites with animal pornography is surfacing.
Story via: Aberrant News
---Even after acknowledging the "more and more" above is Peta-inspired hyperbole (why assume the pre-1999 numbers of sexually injured animals are accurate?) there are a number of things in this news item I never knew. I don't think I'm better for knowing them now.
The Panopticon Singularity
It is in the nature of every police state that the most heinous offense of all is attempting to escape from it. And after all, if you're innocent, why are you trying to hide?
Here's a shopping-list of ten technologies for the police state of the next decade, and estimates of when they'll be available. Of necessity, the emphasis is on the UK -- but it could happen where you live, too: and the prognosis for the next twenty years is much scarier.
via: Aberrant News
The Singularity
---Thinking machines? Almost random excerpts follow:
In fiction, there have been stories of laws passed forbidding the construction of "a machine in the likeness of the human mind". In fact, the competitive advantage -- economic, military, even artistic -- of every advance in automation is so compelling that passing laws, or having customs, that forbid such things merely assures that someone else will get them first.
The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity. In the coming of the Singularity, we are seeing the predictions of _true_ technological unemployment finally come true.
Given all that such technology can do, perhaps governments would simply decide that they no longer need citizens!). Yet physical extinction may not be the scariest possibility. Again, analogies: Think of the different ways we relate to animals. Some of the crude physical abuses are implausible, yet.... In a Post-Human world there would still be plenty of niches where human equivalent automation would be desirable...
The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being...
...perhaps there are rules for distinguishing self from others on the basis of bandwidth of connection. And while mind and self will be vastly more labile than in the past, much of what we value (knowledge, memory, thought) need never be lost...Article
---Most of our futures are mortgaged to the things we create (or that have been created by others) in order to live. This article refers to the time in the not so distant future when those things will no longer need us.
I don't recall. I don't know.
AMY GOODDMAN: Senator Kerry -- quick question. You said that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons when other nations wouldn't try. What intelligence was that based on?
JOHN KERRY: I don't know what report -- I don't know what you are talking about.
AMY GOODDMAN: You said Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons.
JOHN KERRY: When did I say that? I don't recall. I don't know.
AMY GOODDMAN: You said he was developing chemical and biological weapons.
JOHN KERRY: I never said he was developing nuclear. I believe I said --
AMY GOODDMAN: You said, why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons.
JOHN KERRY: Attempting to, because he did. He did attempt to.
AMY GOODDMAN: According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons.
JOHN KERRY: Say it again?
AMY GOODDMAN: You said according to intelligence, Iraq has biological and chemical weapons.
JOHN KERRY: That's what we were told. Right.
AMY GOODDMAN: Is that intelligence wrong? Do you think Bush -- you made a wrong statement, then? Because Kucinich at the time was saying no credible sources were there, but you are saying --
JOHN KERRY: I?m sorry, we're going to have to do --
more of this quality here
January 28, 2004
Spot the difference
Israel/Palestine 2003
East/West Germany, here photographed after "re-unification"
Mobs Mini-Casinos on the Rise, Sheriff says
Taverns used to tuck a single machine in the corner. Now, they line up four or more machines "like a mini-casino," a sheriff's spokesman said. Most games are video poker or push-button slot machines.
Typically, a mobster collects a tax in exchange for protection and permission to use the machine. "Because the bar owner himself is breaking the law, he cannot seek assistance from law enforcement and must comply," the Chicago Crime Commission said...
The machines are legal. But it's illegal for bartenders to pay out winnings...
Since 1996, the (Cook County, Illnois) Sheriff's Department has seized more than 1,000 video gambling machines...
---We'll be seeing video-gambling arcades for adults in shopping malls before the decade's through?
Detainee
---No way to know who this is but he or she is not a POW.
Do you think American police departments will ever do this to their suspects? Do you think any soldiers now in charge of Iraqi/Guantanamo detainees will ever become police officers?
A Surprise in a Wal-Mart Shirt
As I cut my shirt, I hit something hard in the fabric, embedded in it. It was a little less than about a quarter inch big. It made a faint noise as the scissors banged into it. I put down my scissors, picked at the fabric and found a computer-type chip. Story
Performance Flogs Tampa Facial Tech
Tampa officials had planned to use cameras to match criminals' faces against a large criminal database. Their decision to drop the technology casts doubt on its future in the public arena, leaving Virginia Beach, Va., as the only U.S. municipality still using it.
Facial-recognition technology "has never been in a better position than it is right now," he (Joseph Atick, president and chief executive officer of Identix Inc., which provided the software) said. "We are pursuing surveillance at security checkpoints, at border control areas. They think it is important for us to do the check to make sure people aren't on a watch list. But wide-area surveillance in the street is not an application we are pursuing."
"With a database of over 24,000 local wanted and missing persons, and not one alert, we're perplexed as to why that was the fact especially when this entertainment district was frequented on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights with crowds of 10,000 to 20,000" people, he (Capt. Bob Guidara, the police department's spokesman) said.
Tampa, which scrapped the program in August, had been testing the technology for a couple of years in an 11-block section of the city...
---The Tampa Police spokesman didn't mention if Identix's system generated any false positives.
January 27, 2004
The Misanthropic Bitch On "Sex Offender Cams"
("Have the hormones in our meat supply turned that many Americans into rapists and molesters?")
A north-central Phoenix school is the first in the nation to install cameras designed to detect the faces of sex offenders or missing children and instantly alert police.
The system scans 28 facial features and matches them against logged images in the databases. School personnel will not know about the alert, and images that do not match the databases are erased, with no permanent recording...Text / TMB's Home
Minor Atrocities of the 20th Century
There were 21,597 murders reported in the United States in 1995. Here are just a few wars, oppressions and disturbances worldwide which have caused fewer deaths than a single year of murder in America, but more than 6,000, the approximate number killed by the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the worst natural disaster for the US during the 1900s. Source List & Detailed Death Tolls
The Machine that Creates
What (Stephen) Thaler has created is essentially "Thomas Edison in a box," said Rusty Miller, a government contractor at General Dynamics and one of Thaler's chief cheerleaders.
"His first patent was for a Device for the Autonomous Generation of Useful Information," the official name of the Creativity Machine, Miller said. "His second patent was for the Self-Training Neural Network Object. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One. Think about that. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One!"
Supporters say the technology is the best simulation of what goes on in human brains, and the first truly thinking machine.
Others say it is something far more sinister - the beginning of "Terminator" technology, in which self-aware machines could take over the world... Story
Poor May Be Not So Poor After All
According to a recent study by the Heritage Foundation, 46 percent of the technically "poor" live in their own homes, most with more living space than the average person in Paris, London or Vienna. While 73 percent own at least one car, 30 percent own two or more, and 76 percent have air conditioning. Also, according to the study, 65 percent have a washing machine, 97 percent have a color TV and 78 percent have a DVD player or VCR...
Story via: The Monster Limo Weblog
---Not poor enough for the Heritage Foundation, at any rate.
"Most Wanted" Camera for (Bangalore) City Airport
This camera is equipped to zoom in on the 'most wanted' criminals as soon as they enter the sterile zone of the airport. Its beeps then alert the control room. Bangalore Airport ACP (Immigration) Shivaraj Hosamani told The Times of India: "We will classify criminals and anti-social elements wanted by different law enforcing agencies according to the gravity of the offences."
The software that comes with the camera is programmed to pick up the data that is pre-fed by the authorities with all the descriptions, why the particular criminal is wanted and which part of the world he is wanted in... The two new high speed dome cameras of CTNCOM-make will be imported from the UK .
The video information will be directly recorded to the hard disc drive at a very high resolution at 25 frames per camera. A control room will be set up to monitor the activity 24 hours.
Hosamani said presently the airport has cameras which work on the activated detection recording system, and have a capacity to store the images up to seven days. "The current ones are called digital video recorders and we have provided eight channel cord for recording and viewing of all the cameras, with specific cameras to zoom on the face of area of interest or by selecting a particular individual by remote." Story
---Similar to what's used in most American casinos, I believe. Except "the data that is pre-fed by the authorities" probably varies. Since the reporter doesn't mention face recognition software, I'm guessing this system like all others(?) depends on human eyes for it's initial classifying of criminal & antisocial elements.
After someone in security decides whomever might be a person of interest, zooms in and captures their image, I've no idea how quickly or accurately (or if at all) they can match that photo with the names & photos on their "Most Wanted" list. On tv & in the movies this operation always takes under ten seconds.
From the article Facing a Biometric Future:
...do not expect to see machines picking out suspected terrorists in the crowd just yet.
"The current encoding of photographs digitally into passport chips is almost entirely for the purpose of ultimate visual comparison by a human," says Professor John Daugman.
And although humans are not very good at that, he says, machines have an even harder time...
If a machine were to take over in order to match passport images against a database of pictures, Professor Daugman says the rate of error would still be five to 40%, even with the best algorithms.
"Today's computer algorithms for automatic face recognition have a truly appalling performance, in terms of accuracy," he says.
"Even small variations in pose angle, illumination geometry, viewing angle, and facial expression have catastrophic effects on algorithm accuracy," says the professor.
These factors mean there are more variations in your face than there are between your face and another.
Dirty Bomber? Dirty Justice
Speaking at a special news conference in Moscow, (June 2002), U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft accused Padilla of being a new kind of terrorist bomber... "We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or ‘dirty bomb,' in the United States." Ashcroft said the arrest of Padilla "disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot," one that could have caused "mass death and injury." President George W. Bush accused Padilla of "conduct in preparation for acts of international terrorism" and declared him an "enemy combatant." Using the little understood USA Patriot Act, Padilla was denied access to an attorney.
In a matter of minutes, the 40-plus-year history of Miranda rights was swept away. At the time of this writing, (January 2004) Padilla is still sitting in a cell at the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, subject to an unknown number of hours or days or months of questioning, ignorant of his legal rights and the charges against him, and without the advice of an attorney. The government contends Padilla falls under a special exception to the Constitution, but a host of legal scholars feel otherwise... Story
Shuswap Bushman
British Columbia's "Bushman," who lived off the land for 2 years
but occasionally broke into cottages for food and supplies, was
lightly sentenced this week, but it probably had nothing to do with
his professed excuse: He had had to hide out because the owners
of a mining company had put out a contract on him because he
knew too much about a child pornography operation, and some of the stuff he took from cottages (computer, telescope, etc.) was to help in his "investigations."
Item via: News of the Weird ProEdition 1/25/04; links via: Google.
January 26, 2004
+ / &
Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the kind of life he led there before joining the family circle. -- Samuel Beckett (source unknown)
See: Gone Hunting for another measure of the man.
Learn more about the man's friends.
Read Xymphora's take on our Veep.
From Out of His Bunker...
...at the World Economic Forum in Davros, Switzerland, Vice-President Cheney (View image) said...
"The days of looking the other way while despotic regimes trample human rights, rob their nations' wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding their people a steady diet of anti-Western hatred are over.''
Story
---Is that third thing that really matters to his administration, ain't it?
(Mars in-the-news again.)
Javier Solana, the EU's chief foreign affairs official, asked an audience after Cheney's speech to imagine the viewpoint of a visitor from Mars.
The war was about weapons of mass destruction, but none have been found, he said. The U.S. launched the war without UN approval but is now asking for help with the cleanup operation, he said.
"If we were from another planet, the whole thing would be rather strange," Solana said. -- (Chicago Tribune)
Here's the BBC Link to questions about Cheney's speech. I can't find a transcript. Aljazeera has a different spin. (Same speech?)
Here's a link to an assortment of WEF at Davros stories.
Bill Gates spoke too. By the way, "sustainable outsourcing" is a WEF concern!
Of the 172 Yahoo News Photos in it's WEF Slide Show, (left column), mostly head shots of speakers, women were featured in eight. Lynne Cheney appears in 4 other pictures with her hubby.
The WEF is a freaking convention for chrissakes: checkout The Odder Side to the WEF.
When the talk gets around to serious money, women don't have a say.
Laws Covering Camera Phones
Anita Allen-Castellitto, a University of Pennsylvania law and philosophy professor who authored the 1988 book "Uneasy Access: Privacy for Women in a Free Society," said camera phones are becoming tools for men to use as another form of abuse against women.
She said the most disturbing aspect of wireless devices is the ability to quickly send images onto the Internet, unlike traditional cameras. There also isn't enough time for someone to file a civil lawsuit to prevent the image from appearing on the Internet, Allen-Castellitto said.
Privacy concerns over the past year or so have prompted several Chicago-area health clubs and park districts to ban the camera phones from workout areas, showers and locker rooms.
But (Travis) Larson (a spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association in Washington) said the privacy argument doesn't wash when applied in typically public areas.
"The bottom line is when you're out in public and walking down the street, there is no expectation of privacy," Larson said. "Closed-circuit cameras take your picture hundreds of times when you walk down the streets of Chicago."
Yet, the First Amendment probably won't offer any hope for people charged with misusing a camera phone.
That part of the Constitution generally doesn't offer protection for the right to take pictures, said Martin Redish, a Northwestern University law professor and First Amendment authority.
---Will cell-phone cameras put paparazzi out of business? Shouldn't our e-mail boxes be already jammed with photos of celebrities behaving badly? Or strangers doing something noteworthy like those back-yard jackass video stunts? Where ARE the nose-picking photos?
Another role model
You're a banker (or CEO) and screwed over lots of people. And now you have to be in court? Well, show 'em what you think about it - like Germany's Deutsche Bank head Ackermann. Fuck the peons and do the O'Neill: You're rich and you don't care.
January 25, 2004
Spiral Jetty Reemergent
+
View image/ View image/ View image/ View image/ View image/ View image
For nearly three decades, Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" lay underwater in the Great Salt Lake. Since 1999, as drought has lowered the water level, the 1,500-foot coil of black basalt has slowly re-emerged. Now it is completely exposed.
Spiral Jetty Reemergent/ More info/ npr
Earth Science World Imagebank
---Impressive, comprehensive, even without photographs of works by Robert Smithson.
January 24, 2004
Jet Defense, What's the Holdup?
"Shoulder-fired missiles 
(MANPADS)
are probably the greatest danger commercial airliners face in today's world...
More than half a million of the weapons have been made since the mid-'60s, and tens of thousands of them are unaccounted for. The military's planes already have MANPADS countermeasures on board, argues Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York). Why wait to put them on passenger jets?
...buying the systems isn't what really concerns Homeland Security. The maintenance and the logistics are the real back-breakers.
Right now, for laser-based countermeasure programs..."the training, ground support equipment, supplies and spares, and logistics trail that would need to be in place at every U.S. airport would be prohibitive," Homeland Security asserts on its website. "Estimates put this cost at as much as $5 billion to $10 billion per year, a burden that the U.S. commercial air carrier industry cannot bear."
---For the fully loaded system with all the bells & whistles we'll have to wait until a MANPAD destroys a plane with (more than 20? civilian) white people on board. The money will be appropriated before the fuselage cools.
Meanwhile here's a MANPADS Proliferation site to help access the risks. I wonder if anyone in Vegas has posted odds?
(p.s. Those flares on the runway, aren't for the trucks.)
US Military Chief Calls for "Staging Post" Base in Australia
The Pentagon’s highest-ranking military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Richard Myers...referred to the base proposal as a “pre-positioning” staging post, which would house equipment, including tanks, aircraft, fuel and ammunition, to allow the rapid deployment of US troops into theatres of war. He insisted that, flowing from a global reassessment of its use of forces, the US had developed a “places, not bases” doctrine, which required permanent training facilities in various parts of the world.
---I'm impressed with the economy of language as exemplified in the phrase "places, not bases doctrine". Millions of dollars, tons of equipment, thousands of lives, and the laws and sovereignty of nations reduced to four-words. "Thus it shall be."
Directory of Russian Federation Defense Related Agencies
The FBIS (Foreign Broadcast Information Service)
Directory provides open source information on Russian
military structure, installations, intelligence agencies, and
leadership, including English and Russian biographies of
selected individuals.
Although all of the information is unclassified and does not
reflect clandestine collection, such data is nevertheless
typically withheld from public disclosure by the Central
Intelligence Agency.
A few years ago, the CIA refused to confirm or deny the mere
fact that it had prepared biographies of certain foreign
leaders.
Book Scribbles Reveal Public, Private Histories
Jan. 20, 2004 -- The act of writing in the margins of books - which today is generally considered vandalism - was accepted as a privilege of ownership in the 18th and early 19th centuries...
"No one really gave it a second thought and more often than not it was considered a good thing," says Heather Jackson in "Romantic Readers: The Witness of Marginalia." "It made the books more valuable and it was actually seen as an attractive option for readers to add to a book by writing inside it...."
If you look at a lot of these marked-up books, you get a sense of a collective mentality. Reading them, you are learning something about the way people thought about books, about the act of reading and about themselves. They didn't think of themselves as consumers but as collaborators." Story
---I'm not a consumer; I'm a collaborator, thank you.
Compare & Contrast w/MeFi's Marginalia & Other Crimes. See also: Marginalia by America's past Poet Laureate Billy Collins and E.A. Poe's Marginalia
Hypnotised Jackson Denied Abuse Allegations, Says Uri Geller
---Hypnotism and Uri Geller: one would think Michael Jackson's publicists would keep stories like this out of the newspapers.
January 23, 2004
Now here's an idea...
... for all those people who are campaigning to become president: Get a face lifting like Italy's joke of a prime minister.
PS: No, I'm not making this up (see Spiegel article [in German])
Federal Lands & Indian Reservations
The Federal Government owns nearly 650 million acres of land - almost 30 percent of the land area of the United States. Federally-owned and managed public lands include National Parks, National Forests, and National Wildlife Refuges. These are lands that are held for all Americans. Printable Maps
---For example: Indiana
The Missing Persons Issue Ireland
This is my personal declaration! ---
I hearby accuse the Irish Garda of deliberately covering up the real and true figures of Irish missing, for the purpose of evil and criminal intent, and to deceive the Irish at home and those beyond these shores, and lulling them into a sort of fools paradise and hiding the terrible dangers, which have existed in Ireland since the onset of the early 1990s!
via: psychoceramics (link on the left)
---There are more people than paying jobs; not everyone's life, let alone presence, is valued; freedom isn't free. That said, the numbers of missing people in our industrialized societies are heartbreaking and mind-boggling. Ranting is one way to deal with it.
Bush Stats
Bush Stats via: bifurcated rivets
---Accountability is an important function of leadership.
January 22, 2004
Blam Blam
cartoon violence: traumatic events retold in the style of 1930's animated cartoons (via saturation).
Where war chests go when campaigns Fold
"When a candidate (in this case for President of the US) withdraws from the race, what happens to any leftover money that he/she has raised?" See: Who gets Gephardt's Cash?
via: Ask MeFi