July 31, 2004
Twisted Tale of Art, Death & DNA
Steve Kurtz is an artist operating in an unusual medium. Rather than exploring ideas with brushes and paint, he uses bacteria and DNA to create works meant to spark debate about the safety and morality of genetic research.
But Kurtz's work and his beliefs are more radical than those of many of his peers. He has written proposals for releasing mutant flies into restaurants, and demonstrated methods for destroying genetically modified crops. And it is Kurtz's views, his supporters say, that have Kurtz on the wrong side of a federal investigation sparked by the death of his wife Hope...
story
Francis Crick; DNA Pioneer Dies
Crick and his US collaborator James Watson described a double helix linked by rungs, each of which was a pair made from two of the four "letters" of DNA. They suggested this could be the means for copying genetic material. The implications were profound as DNA proved to be nothing less than the inherited template for creating and sustaining life.
story
~I don't understand the ubiquity of DNA's double-helix. Its popularity. I think I understand a bit of the scientific and societal impact of its discovery (see entry below) but I don't get how everyone somewhat literate since 1953 recognizes this representation. It's not a soft-drink bottle, cartoon character, basketball-player or an automobile. It hasn't starred in any movies, stripped for Playboy, sold a million records or married a prince.
From 1953 this photo shows the boys working on the first double-helix model. Tinkertoys? An even less glamorous, more obscure (but more realistic?) image of DNA doing its thang can be seen here.(I don't understand dinosaurs' popularity either.)
Biohackers' Threat?
~A 'molecular biologist' responds to "Experts Worry that Synthetic Biology May Spawn Biohackers" article:
"...biohackers are a very real threat. Many people may say it is not, many computer scientists, business people and others who really have few credentials to voice such an opinion. Biological Scientists may be shy about confirming this threat as well, as it may panic people and cut funding. Of course mentioning it also gives some people the idea to do it in the first place. Even I have been very quiet on the topic as it gives me nightmares and it also gives nightmares to my friends.
I was at a biotech conference in 1997 when a scientist mentioned that they knew of a lab that just as a experiment, made a bacteria resistant to every known antibiotic. This took a few scientists a week to do in between other experiments. They quit quickly after they realized how scary it was. That was 7 years ago! The main reason this kind of thing has not happened yet, in my opinion, is most bioscientists are highly educated "good" people with many oversights. Sociopaths are usually identified before they get a PhD.
Unfortunately, automated instrumentation is being exported to many other countries and being used by less educated people. In the near future, automated instruments may be in the hands of less educated or more desperate people."
via: politech w/link to the biologist.
~Slashdot offers readers' comments on biohacking.
Remember This
t r u t h o u t | Democratic Convention Coverage
By William Rivers Pitt
Thursday 29 July 2004
10:30PM
He said the words: "Bring our troops home."
~By this time next year we should expect 'President Kerry' to have kept this promise?
*
July 30, 2004
15 Theses on the Cute
Cleverness shields or distances; it plays potentially hurtful games. Impertinence simplifies this game, softening the con artist's plot into a joke. Prettiness and daintiness further soften a barbed joke into an appeal or flirtation; self-conscious or excessive appeal becomes suspect. Suspicious appeal shades toward a con.
Cute marks a crucial absence. It guarantees, by definition, the nonappearance of malice, premeditation, irony, self-consciousness, accusation, or mercenary agenda. However, in its manufactured forms cute remains a major locus for—in some ways is synony-mous with—the manipulative gesture, the prepackaged, consumable demonstration of (necessarily factitious) innocence, spon-taneity, and need..
article
*
US General Witnessed Torture; Iraqi Testifies
In a videotaped deposition from Iraq... Saddam "Sam" Saleh Aboud said he endured beatings at the prison. During one session, he said, his hood was removed and he saw Army Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski.
Aboud identified Karpinski in a news magazine photograph that his lawyer, Michael Hourigan, showed him.
"He was adamant that there was an occasion when he was being tortured, in Tier 1A, when she was present and watching and laughing as he was being tortured," Hourigan said. He said Aboud did not know Karpinski's identity until he told him.
"He knew she was a supervisor, because she had a star on her hat and she was in an American uniform," Hourigan said. "He said the other soldiers would defer to her."
story
From: The Stanley Milgram Website
Question: Milgram's obedience experiments revealed something we didn't know before: The unexpectedly high degree of obedience-65% in his first experiment-shown by normal people to destructive orders, even in the absence of coercion. But there is another important finding that sometimes gets overlooked-that the amount of obedience varied as a function of the situation. In fact, across the whole series of over 20 experiments, Milgram found that the proportion of obedient subjects (that is, those who gave the maximum 450 volt shock) ranged from a low of 0% to a high of 92.5%.
Which of the following experimental variations yielded a 0% obedience rate?
a. Two peers (confederates) rebel, leaving the real subject to administer shocks by himself;
b. An ordinary man (rather than the experimenter) gives the orders;
c. The one experiment in which women served as subjects;
d. The experimenter says to stop the shocks, but the learner says he wants to continue;
e. The experimenter gives his orders by phone;
f. The experiment is conducted in an office building in Bridgeport, without any connection to Yale;
g. Rather than having to increase the shock each time the learner made a mistake, the subject could choose any shock level.
answer
[scroll to one entry above the last answer on the page]
via: The Stanley Milgram Website
~See also:
milgram reenactment
Doctors Without Borders Quits Afghanistan
The international aid group Doctors Without Borders (Medicins Sans Frontieres) has been in Afghanistan since 1980. It has braved the Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989, the civil war in the 1990s, and the rule of the hard-line Taliban. The medical charity has now decided to pull out of Afghanistan, becoming the first major aid agency to quit the war-ravaged country since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001.
story
"To erase all distinctions between military efforts against insurgents and humanitarian work, puts all aid workers in danger," asserted (Doctor's Withour Borders) NGO's Secretary General. It's all the more dramatic as the Afghan population, hostage for decades to war and destruction, and which lives in some of the worst hygienic conditions in the world, has an urgent need of this aid".
Le Monde editorial
~Is it democracy yet?
July 29, 2004
Girl Hit With Taser Was Combative; Police Reports Say
A 9-year-old handcuffed girl was swearing, thrashing and attempting to kick out a patrol car window when a South Tucson police sergeant used a stun gun to subdue her..
The girl is 4 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs 85 pounds.
The Taser administers 50,000 volts and four-thousandths of an amp. It can be used in contact with a person or through two probes connected to 21-foot wires fired out of a cartridge. The shock overrides the central nervous system and causes complete, involuntary muscle contraction.
An official with the Scottsdale company that manufactures the Taser told the Star earlier this week that the stun guns have been used on children in other incidents nationally, but they do no more harm to children than adults and often result in less-serious injuries.
story
~It's a judgement call. Police officers are professionally trained to use appropriate force and kids are more limber and more resilient than adults(?) Although I found the taser manufacturer's statement unnerving: "often result in less-serious injuries" sounds to me a little like "always results in some sort of injury". Not as reassuring as the other experts quoted in the article. (Can a 85 pound kid kick out a car window? Only (after being tasered) in Tuscon, Arizona?)
New (UK) Laws Needed for Nano-pollution
A report by the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering...recommended that nanoparticles and nanotubes be treated as new chemicals under UK and European legislation to allow appropriate safety tests and labelling.
It also said nanotech materials should be approved by an independent scientific safety committee before they can be used in consumer products such as cosmetics.
Super-fine particles are already being incorporated into a number of cosmetics and composite materials to improve their performance.
story
~As far as I can tell no comparable USA studies of nanotechnology have made similar recommendations. Nor do I get the sense that the recommendations here will soon be made into laws, or acted upon in any way. I'm certain that nano-fiber masks and air-filters will be widely available when nano-pollution becomes a public health problem. Until that time it's 'manifest destiny' for nano-science, anything's possible, the sky's the limit. I wonder when we'll see the first reports of nano-technology (work?) related illnesses? Within five years?
~See also the graphic: Some Potential Uses of Nanotechnology
~Apparently cyber-cafes and their habitues will be the first to reap the benefits of nano-technology.
Space Gadget Cassini Finds the Death Star!
link thanks jason
~Nothing is as it's described, especially with astronomy. This image was fabricated on a computer from a black & white photo of an navel orange. Think of these images, where third person proof is unavailable, as mass rorschach tests. Marketing firms are very interested in the sorts of images that catch the public's fancy. They pay computer geeks to regularly crank out these 'photos' and place them with reputable news services while watching and measuring who notices. Months later variations of these same images and how people responded (Death Star!) to them show up in advertising specifically targeting the groups most moved. (Popular music has been doing it with 'sounds' for years.)
July 28, 2004
2004 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA)
[caption]
130 winners of the 2004 Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA)
link
US Colonel Admits Holding Iraqi Teens
In an independent report, Lieutenant Colonel Joe Yoswa, a spokesman for the Defense Department allegedly confirmed that the U.S. military is holding 58 juveniles. None of them are female, he said.
In the report, published by Arkansas Indymedia, he stated that the U.S. does imprison children in sweeps made by patrols in Iraq.
“He was full of fear, very alone. He had the thinnest little arms that I have ever seen. His whole body shook. His wrists were so thin that we could not put handcuffs on him. As soon as I saw him for the first time and led him to the interrogation, I felt sorry for him. The interrogation specialists doused him with water and put him in a truck. Then they drove with him throughout the night, and at that time it was very, very cold. Then they smeared him with mud and showed him to his
likewise imprisoned father. With him [the father] they had tried out other interrogation methods. But they had not succeeded in making him talk. The interrogation specialists told me that after the father had seen his son in that condition, it broke his heart. He wept and promised to tell them what they wanted to know.”
Whole families are arrested and taken from their homes in the middle of the night, the report said.
The families are taken before a “committee” who then decides who to release and who to imprison, according to the report. The highest ranking officer on the “committee” is a Colonel.
story
~Is it democracy yet?
Why the Democrats Deserve Nader
One useful way of estimating how little separates the Democratic and Republican parties, and particularly their presidential nominees, is to tot up the issues on which there is tacit agreement either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod-and-wink that these are not matters suitable to be discussed in any public forum, beyond pro forma sloganeering: the role of the Federal Reserve, trade policy, economic redistribution, the role and budget of the CIA and other intelligence agencies (almost all military), nuclear disarmament, allocation of military procurement, reduction of the military budget, the roles and policies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and kindred multilateral agencies, crime, punishment and the prison explosion, the war on drugs, corporate welfare, energy policy, forest policy, the destruction of small farmers and ranchers, Israel, the corruption of the political system.
In the face of this conspiracy of silence, the more third party challenges the better. Nader is doing his duty...
article by Alexander Cockburn
~Don't you almost hate it when a writer sees through the promise of a new administration before its elected? What a buzz kill. (Save your enthusiasm till next year when Kerry and Congress refuse to bring all our victorious troops home.)
Comic-Con International
~You need to put the news of the day in perspective? I got-cher perspective right here:
"There are 80,000 people who are going to pass through here, and there are only 35,000 at the Democratic convention. What does that tell you?" said Lance Henriksen, star of the upcoming "Alien vs. Predator" film.
story thanks joerg
Cyborgasms [1996]
Cybersex Amongst Multiple-Selves and Cyborgs in the Narrow-Bandwidth Space of America Online Chat Rooms
MA Dissertation by Robin B. Hamman
~From a footnote: Four Other Forms of Cybersex
There are several kinds of cybersex which are different from the two forms of cybersex seen in AOL chat rooms. I identify software based cybersex, Virtual Reality cybersex, electronic pornography, email cybersex, and MUD based cybersex below. There may be other forms of cybersex still, but these appear to be the main ones.
In "Cybersex: Empire of the Senseless", Kevin Rafferty discusses the growing popularity in Japan of software which allows users to create their own virtual girlfriend. Over one million computer users have purchased one such programme. The caption beneath the picture which accompanies the article claims that, "Japanese women may be under threat from the booming market in computer girlfriends." Rafferty asserts that this programme reinforces the "traditional" Japanese male view of women as powerless without men. (Rafferty, 1996) This article portrays Japanese male computer users as sexual deviants because they have turned away from real women in favour of virtual ones. In this form of cybersex, the men are not turning away from reality in favour of the virtual. They are using virtually simulated women in an attempt to feel what it is like to be loved by a woman. It is not the simulation they desire, it is a real girlfriend and the accompanying feelings of love.
Outfitted with the latest in High-Tech goggles and movement sensitive body suits, a person can now have sex in virtual reality. Examples of this second form of cybersex are most often found in Science Fiction such as in the movie Lawnmower Man . Jobe, the main character in Lawnmower Man , is shown having VR cybersex with his girlfriend. Virtual Reality cybersex, like the video game type of cybersex shown above, is based on reality. I do not feel that virtual reality cybersex will ever completely simulate real sex. Its purpose appears to be to test the imagination of programmers and the capabilities of computers, not to replace real life sex.
There is another form of cybersex which, unlike software and VR based cybersex, is available on AOL. Pornography. One day as I was researching, I came across a chat room with the letters "XXX" at the end of the name. Upon entering, I noticed that no one was speaking to each other. Then my computer alerted me that I had received email. Lot's of it. I opened the first email to find that it was blank with a .pic file attached. I opened the file and was confronted with what appears to be a home photograph of a naked woman in a nurses cap standing over a toilet and using kitchen items to masturbate. I opened several of the other files just to make sure I had not been sent this file on accident. Some of these images were even more shocking. However, I have never seen , been offered, or heard of (other than in the media), any nude pictures of children while using AOL. The existence of paedophilia on the internet and online services is shocking and has warranted the headlines it has brought, but I do not feel that there is a large number of people, if any, actively trading child pornography on AOL.
In the popular fiction of Blackwell's book store in Liverpool, I came across a pile of small yellow books entitled e-mail://a.love.story.//. This novel is the fictionalised account of Stephanie Fletcher who becomes part of an online community that trades sexually explicit tales by e-mail. (Fletcher, 1996) Trading sexual stories by email is the electronic equivalent of sending them by post, and is the fourth form of cybersex identified in this appendix. People who engage in this form of cybersex are not trying to escape from reality, they are trying to tell others about it using a method of communication which allows them to write their thoughts and deliver them to their recipient in seconds.
What all the above forms of cybersex have in common is that the imagination of the user is very important if the user is to gain sexual pleasure from them. Multiple user domains (MUDs) often play host to cybersex, but I do not identify this form of cybersex as being significantly different than cybersex in online chat rooms. MUDs are virtual places where characters, objects, rooms, and actions are all created in text. MUD users often have cybersex in much the same way as IRC and chat room users do. They tell each other sexual stories or interactively masturbate. This form of cybersex is not discussed any further here because it is essentially the same as cybersex in online chat rooms only the rooms are not graphically based. Further research into the differences and similarities between MUD cybersex and AOL chat room cybersex is needed before any findings from this paper can be generalised to MUD cybersex.
~Have 'cyborgasms' changed much in the past eight years? Has the use of web cams and the proliferation of professional sex workers on-line made cyber-sex chat-rooms obsolete? Have literate wankers succumb to web-cam porn? Or are there still hard-liners who need text to get off? (I recently found that dissertations about sex can do the trick.)
July 27, 2004
US Criminal Numbers Hit Record High
The US has nearly 6.9 million people - roughly 3.2% of the adult population - in prison or on probation or parole, a Justice Department report reveals.
More than 130,000 people were processed by the criminal justice system last year...
story
~Not a campaign issue? Maybe promises of more federal funds for prisons to house all these people wll pad a few campaign speeches but what could a Kerry or Edwards say from now until November that would signify a fundamental change is on the way?
Alabama Deputy Discovers Civil Rights Era Artifacts
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - A sheriff’s deputy who was cleaning a basement storage room stumbled upon a box containing a trove of artifacts from the civil rights era, including black-and-white mug shots of Rosa Parks and a young Martin Luther King Jr.
story
~I wish I lived in a time when my arrest could have historical significance, instead of just another disappearance, another flush by the status quo. That my loss, my suffering would one day be associated with so many others real-life gains?
Compare that kind of celebrity with a Britney, a Brad Pitt, a Princess Di or a Jonny Versace and you see what a extravagantly lame monster-construct fame has become.
Harley Caskets
large
"The Original Custom Casket Built for Bikers"
eagle custom caskets, inc.
~"If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it". ~Isadora Duncan *
PubHub: Repository of Foundation-Sponsored Reports
home
For example: PubHub search results for 'photography' gave 44 results. via: neatnewstuff
~If you find out how to use any of the information available here for personal gain, let me know?
Let the Games Begin
The further into the fortnight you get, the fewer people you have living under coach-policed curfews, forced to abstain from the bacchanalia. And once they’re done, watch out: thousands of young people with boundless energy and great legs are suddenly let loose.
Once freed, many athletes simply cannot control themselves. They are slaves to an irresistible physiological force called "tapering" that works like this: many competitors in endurance sports consume as many as 9,000 calories a day at the height of their training cycles. But they swim or run or pedal seven hours a day to burn these off. In order to peak for the Games, however, they reduce their training time to mere minutes in the days preceding their events while keeping the calorie count virtually constant. Thus an athlete is spring-loaded for his or her moment in the sun: lots of rest, lots of energy - boom. The results, particularly within a large, like-minded population, can be electric. "When you have 10,000 people walking around who are amped up on their own glycogen you can almost see the sparks flying off their skin," says BJ Bedford, the American backstroke gold-medallist at Sydney.
story via: dr.menlo
~I was thinking sports training at the international level was obsessive-compulsive behavior at it's most outrageous.
(Who needs to imagine abductions by space aliens when there's human beings putting themselves through the regimes demanded by professional sports?)
Now I see the physical rewards are more immediate, more absorbing and less punishing.
Also via Dr. Menlo Google links to: "sex is good for you"
~But the older you get the more it costs.
July 26, 2004
American Crusade 2001+ Trading Cards
World affairs today can sure be confusing!
President Bush tried his bestest to simplify the picture as Good vs. Evil, but it's still a jumble! Who knew all those crazy Dorkistan countries even existed?! Now The Infinite Jest rides to the rescue with a set of educational trading cards.
Fun to collect! Fun to trade! Fun to drain a box of inkjet cartridges!
collection
(112 cards)
Congress Votes for Torture
Remember how congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle deplored the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib as "un-American"? Last Thursday, however, the House quietly passed a renewed appropriation that keeps open the U.S.'s most infamous torture-teaching institution, known as the School of the Americas (SOA), where the illegal physical and psychological abuse of prisoners of the kind the world condemned at Abu Ghraib and worse has been routinely taught for years.
story
Duke University Experiments with iPods as Learning Device
Freshmen at Duke University this fall will receive their own iPods in an experiment to see whether the Apple's portable music player can also serve as a learning tool. The university will distribute 1,650 iPods for the pilot program, as part of Duke's plan to use more technology in teaching. The university also will create a Web site modeled on the Apple iTunes online music site from which students can download songs and course content from faculty, including language lessons, lectures and audio books.
press release
~For another perspective: Info. on USDA's School Meals Program
And the strong seem to get more
While the weak one's fade
Empty pockets don't
Ever make the grade
'Cause Momma may help
And Poppa may help
But God Bless the Child
That's got his own
That's got his own *
DeerCam
(From a Bow and Arrow Hunting Catalog)
The "Deercam" digital scouting camera.
Combing the forest floor for tracks, buck scrapes and other signs of deer activity?
That's soooo Hiawatha.
How about a weatherproof digital camera, mounted on a tree, that automatically photographs everything that walks - or scurries - by, day or night.
"Look what you might be missing," the catalog says of the Deercam.
"Motion/heat sensor has adjustable sensitivity. Long-distance 25-foot flash effectiveness."
Now only $399.99.
article
US Special Forces to Provide Security at Olympics
The United States has... committed 400 Special Forces soldiers to provide security. To get around local sensitivities and Greek Law, the US troops will be operating as part of a NATO force.
For personal security of its athletes it's understood that there will be more than 100 armed US State Department agents in the Olympic Village. The overall security budget for the Games in Athens next month is already a record, in excess of $2 billion.
radio transcript
~Don't leave home without it (them)? And there have been rumors that NATO was finished. Imagine that.
New British Special Forces to Penetrate Al Qaeda
The Reconnaissance and Surveillance Regiment will work closely with the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service.
It will be given the authority to operate around the world, working closely with friendly intelligence agencies such as the CIA and Mossad.
... comprising up to 600 troops... It will at first be formed from members of a highly secret surveillance agency - the Joint Communications Unit Northern Ireland - which has worked in Ulster for more than 20 years. The unit, which worked with the SAS, MI5 and the Special Branch, perfected the art of covert surveillance in urban and rural areas and created a network of double agents who supplied the British security forces with intelligence on terrorist attacks.
Its success stemmed from its ability to plant listening devices and cameras in the homes and cars of terrorists, to bug phones and to monitor suspects at close quarters.
Such was the secrecy surrounding the unit that few of its operations were made public...
press release / source> [The Telegraph]
Dragon's Teeth
poem by lawrence ferlinghetti
poem & photo via: rodhi.com
~Crazy beatnik poet: over the past sixty years America has created the most powerful military machine in the history of the world, spending many billions of dollars. What did you expect?
With a ruling class descended from religious zealots, royal bastards, thieves, misfits and slave owners one might also marvel at the relative restraint of America's military. You would think there would be a Waco-type action every month. So far as I know no smart bombs have ever been used against American citizens on American soil.
July 25, 2004
Texas' Longest-Serving Death Row Inmate Ruled Retarded
BEAUMONT - A judge ruled Friday that Texas' longest-serving death row inmate is retarded...
(Walter) Bell, who arrived on death row 29 years ago, was condemned in the slayings of Ferd and Irene Chisum at their Port Arthur home in 1974.
Bell says he didn't kill the Chisums and a confession was forced out of him by authorities.
Fun in the Great Outdoors
Henry Ward Beecher said: "Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men and animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock." *
~It's not as if this flower can talk. Or acknowledge that I exist, like the chattering birds, scattering rabbits and the hovering mosquitos. Maybe it's enough that I saw something in it. Allowing that recognition, whatever that might be, is its gift to Mr. Beecher and me (and now to you).
Diagrams
Hello.
We are just getting started. This website is devoted to the display of
information with diagrams. We invite visitors to look around and take
a peek at what we've been doing.
For example: Bush Dynasty
The diagrams (so far) have been created using presentation software. Most are familiar with Microsoft's Powerpoint, and we use a similar application, Sun's StarOffice StarImpress. When the diagram is finished, we capture the screen and convert it to a .gif image and that's what you see on this site.
Diagrams of the War of the Roses; Hitler's Family Tree; Connections Between States & Countries; Bible-Related Diagrams; Wall Street Scandals etc.
July 24, 2004
The Red vs Blue Map
~Rebecca's Blood uses the map to identify among a number of things the media's "structural biases".
While Atomgrid is moved to do some number crunching:
"Adding all of the numbers together, this means that the combined number needed to substantially change the red and blue map equates to 1,467,932 former Bush supporters voting more sensibly, 2,935,863 election 2000 Bush supporters not voting, 2,935,863 new democratic voters, or any combination thereof. That represents just 1.38% of Bush voters nation-wide changing their votes, or 2.79% additional Democrats or fewer Republican votes allocated in proper proportions among the above states."
Considering that the above map and paragraph are nearly three-years old you can now understand how odd it is that Bush spends so much time and money shoring-up his base. Bush has been in Ohio so often one would think he's auditioning for a character slot in Harvey Perkar's American Splendor."
Why the Backward Flag on Airforce One?
*
~Because that's what a real flag looks like when soldiers are running towards the battle or with President Bush's use of Air Force One when running away.
Isn't finding hidden symbolism fun?
July 23, 2004
The Best of Photojournalism 2004
Newspaper Photographer of the Year
David Leeson (Honorable Mention)
link
~When it's as good as the images here, there's nothing as powerful. Unfortunately, outside of competitions like this and expensive books, most photojournalism images have lifespans equal to butterflies with about the same number of collectors and aficionados.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" Making GOP Nervous
Based on a record-breaking gross of $94 million through last weekend, theaters already have sold an estimated 12 million tickets to "Fahrenheit 9/11."
...the movie from director Michael Moore is seen as a political headache because it has reached beyond the Democratic base. Independents and GOP-leaning voters are likely to be found sitting beside those set to revel in its depiction of a clueless president with questionable ties to the oil industry.
story
Study: Majority of Americans Out of Touch With Mainstream
"All we know right now is that 70 to 85 percent of Americans are unfamiliar with, unaware of, or just plain don't care about what the American people are watching on television, seeing at the movie theater, listening to on their radios, wearing, rooting for, falling in love with all over again, or downloading."
"It's disturbing," (PCRG consultant Paul) Van Lamm said. "I'm uncomfortable with the number of U.S. citizens who have no interest in what interests the greater part of their fellow citizens."
article thanks jason.
Trillions More Internet Addresses May Emerge
This should allow for virtually any number of new computers or devices to be connected to the internet in the future. IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6)will also introduce reliability and security enhancements.
press release
Atomgrid opines:
"In the FUTURE it will be very, very important for your Internet Fridge to have always-on broadband connectivity.
There's plenty of IP addresses under IPv4, as your typical dial-up customer gets his IP assigned dynamically. You don't start running into a wall when there's over 4-billion IP addresses (octets) until you start hooking all sorts of physical devices into the Internet. A work-around would be to specify that consumer appliances only be allowed dynamically-assigned IP addresses (how often will your fridge REALLY need to talk to the grocery store?), but how dare we, as a society, tell someone that their Internet fridge isn't important enough for its own fixed IP address? That Internet fridge is probably raising their kids and thus rightly deserves a fixed IP.
The hyper-Saganistic "trillions and trillions" of IP addresses available under IPv6 is still a FINITE number (remember, IPv4 looked just as juicy. A billion was a big number to those cave-dwellers).
Anyway, IPv6 is more about paving the way for your Internet fridge's
friends to move in."
~Looks like appliances with broadband connectivity will become consumer friendly in ways we can't imagine and would never wish for.
I'm thinking of the relationships some kids have with stuffed animals, imaginary friends, and video games. That plus the plasma-screen visuals from the movie the Minority Report.
Your toaster will no longer reflect your face. Along with 105 touch-screen settings for personalizing and storing how every member of your family likes their toast, it'll automatically inform you (via e-mail?) when you're running out of bread using edible sensors put into the end slices of each loaf. More importantly that toaster will fully utilize it's broadband capabilities by continually broadcasting rock videos or some other cable-tv like program (porn?) along with ads that have been painstakingly researched and selected for people with your family's "bread use" preferences.
You thought pop-up ads on web-sites were bad? Imagine most appliances and various pieces of furniture in your home responding to the RFID sensors on items you've brought from the store with ad agency created (kooky! eye-catching! imaginative! personalized!) reminders, warnings and just plain ads. The bed-side table that reminds you when you're running out of condoms and/or batteries can also be used to sell you other products.
In a short time these appliances that 'talk' and furniture that 'thinks' will become surrogate pets and companions for many of us.
Surrogate pets? ~Cieciel
July 22, 2004
US Says It Got Afghan from Vigilantes
The U.S. military acknowledged Thursday it held an Afghan man for a month after taking custody of him from a trio of American counterterror vigilantes who have since been arrested on charges of torturing prisoners at a private jail they ran in the Afghan capital.
The American military has tried to distance itself from the group, led by a former American soldier named Jonathan Idema, insisting they were freelancers working outside the law. But spokesman Maj. Jon Siepmann acknowledged that the military had received a detainee from Idema's group at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, on May 3.
story / also
~Obviously movie-script material. Is Bruce Willis too old? How about a tv sit-com updating Hogan's Heroes in present day Afghanistan or Iraq? This time around "Hogan" is the prison/safe house 'commandant'! It could be a comedy-drama. A para-military mod squad in enemy territory operating by their own rules, answering to no one, not even the US Military. Plus there's ordinary non-terrorist Muslims everywhere doing something wacky, picturesque or just plain tragic.
The Learning Page
The Learning Page is designed to help educators use the American Memory Collections to teach history and culture. It offers tips and tricks, definitions and rationale for using primary sources, activities, discussions, lesson plans and suggestions for using the collections in classroom curriculum.
What is American Memory?
American Memory is an online archive of over 100 collections of rare and unique items important to America’s heritage. The collections contain more than 7 million primary source documents, photographs, films, and recordings that reflect the collective American memory.
link to Lesson Plans, Collections, E-mail Updates & Chat.
~Seeing images grouped, cataloged, and arranged is a very different experience than seeing a single image without context, or a series of seemingly unrelated images. Even those selected through library science and the needs of lesson plans.
The heritage of Golda Meir
"f a European cabinet minister were to declare, 'I don't want these long-nosed Jews to serve me in restaurants,' all of Europe would be up in arms and this would be the minister's last comment as a minister. Three years ago, our former labor and social affairs minister, Shlomo Benizri, from Shas, stated: 'I can't understand why slanty-eyed types should be the ones to serve me in restaurants.' Nothing happened. We are allowed to be racists. And if a European government were to announce that Jews are not permitted to attend Christian schools? The Jewish world would rise up in protest. But when our Education Ministry announces that it will not permit Arabs to attend Jewish schools in Haifa, it's not considered racism. Only in Israel could this not be labeled racist. The heritage of Golda Meir - it was she who said that after what the Nazis did to us, we can do whatever we want - is now having a late and unfortunate revival." - story
July 21, 2004
Questioning of Photo Student Challenged
SEATTLE -- Ian Spiers had just hours to finish an assignment for his photography class. He was taking shots of a railroad bridge near the Ballard Locks when an officer with a German shepherd approached him, asked him what he was doing and requested some ID.
Later, he was questioned and photographed by a Homeland Security agent.
It was the second time in less than two months that Spiers had been questioned about taking pictures of a landmark that attracts hundreds of tourists a day,
"We've seen the constant erosion of our civil liberties amid this cry for homeland security by doing things that have an appearance of making us safe, but in reality it's a sham," (Donald Winslow, editor of the National Press Photographers Association's magazine.) said. "No one showed up at the World Trade Center and took photographs from nine different angles before they flew planes into it."
story via/archived: politech w/ urls to NPPA & Mr. Spier's website:
"Brown Equals Terrorist".
War Peace President
GW Bush, formerly war president, now self-proclaimed peace president. War is peace is war, and we'll all go to hell.
(Image courtesy the White House)
Altering Reality
~The Protest Warriors site provided me with a little epiphany, along the lines of "Tom Brokaw's Money" (see below). These people aren't stupid or insane; they're wealthy. Comparatively.
Forget drugs, alcohol, sex with strangers, piercings, fasting, yoga, meditation, prayer, exercise, food...nothing and I mean nothing will alter your perception of reality more effectively or as permanently as money.
There's nothing like the high you get from being out from under the creditor's, the bills, the insecurity, the penny ante "nickel and dime-img" (sic) 90% of Americans experience day-in-and-day-out for their whole lives. (The legal rip-offs of shoddy merchandise, crummy service, hidden monthly charges and taxes along with legislated fees). Millions of good decent people knowing nothing other than lifetimes of debt: interest payments, mortgages, hospital bills.
The more money you have the wilder your flights of fancy, the wackier your view of the world, the more your reality is altered. The more freedom you possess.
("K"'s being equivalent to micrograms when trying to establish how far gone people with money can get.)
Think of it, America has more millionaires, more people on this permanent high, than any other nation in the world, than any other time in THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. Ronald Reagan was absolutely right when he talked about the greatness of America for people like him.
You wonder why you can't believe some of the crazy things the politicians or their journalists say? You're comparative poverty won't allow you to experience their level of comfort, their reality.
They're not crazy or stupid, you're poor.
If you had their money, you'ld completely understand the wisdom and guidance that falls like nectar from their sun-kissed lips.
Money just doesn't talk, it talks ceaselessly. It whispers, cajoles, shouts and for those who possess enough of it, it screams for joy.
You want the world to change? Get comfortably wealthy.
You want to change the world? Get stinking rich.
There's no other way to achieve enlightenment. There's no middle road.
Poverty is ignorance, wealth is knowledge.
Don't be such a buzz kill for those who've achieved that higher spiritual plane. Maybe if you're good to them, they'll share their blessings with you and you can go crazy too.
thank you, please send checks or cash.
Protest Warriors
...created to help arm the liberty-loving Silent Majority with ammo -- ammo that strikes at the intellectual solar plexus of the Left.
link
~Compared to the the rest of the world, war has been very good for America. The Iraqi Invasion has been especially good for a number of American corporations.
Green Goo: The New Nano-Threat
...the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration said the risks from green goo demand the most urgent foresight and caution. "With nanobiotech, researchers have the power to create completely new organisms that have never existed on Earth,"
Annabelle Hett, a Swiss Re (the world's second-largest re-insurance firm) risk expert said, "Insufficient research has been done to say with any certainty whether, and if so to what extent, nanoparticles or products containing nanoparticles actually pose a threat."
...naysayers may predict potential disasters and promoters may minimize the risks, but it will probably be capital, wielded by people like gun-shy businesspeople and risk-wary insurers, that will finally decide the issue.
story
~Or what's a government for? Puts the conservatives' myth about the intrusive, interfering 'big government' in perspective doesn't it? Here's research involving materials with unimaginable risks and none of the scientists or their corporate and university sponsors are complaining that government regulations are getting in their way. Maybe the researchers are sparing no expense keeping their nano-particles and nano-biologics from polluting the environment? Maybe no one in government or the industry is watching too closely and in a few years nano-pollution superfund sites will sprout across the globe like mushrooms and nano-particle/biologic illnesses (e.g. previously rare forms of cancer and God knows what infections) will become as common as head-colds? Rest assured insurers and business people will decide the risks they're willing to put us all through. Could our legislators, scientists, and journalists imagine regulating nanotech research any other way? (I can't.) Lets hope they're all open and above board with not only their successes but with also their (potentially investment crippling) failures.
Negative Capability
The following assertions were collected from public statements made by George W. Bush and his official spokesmen since 1997. Originally from Harper's Magazine, May 2004.
link
~The Litany of President George W. Bush...
July 20, 2004
WWJD: Who Would Jesus Democratize?
...as a Christian society, it is our God-ordained responsibility to convert all nations. Much as a father to his children, we must teach others what they cannot teach themselves. And like a father, it has nothing to do with arrogance, but everything to do with fulfilling an obligation.
article via: unknown news
~A spoof which succinctly sums up the 'rationale' behind the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq? Or how the oil men and defense contractors sold it and continue to justify it to the rank and file Republicans?
German Courts Refuse Evidence Obtained by U.S. Torture
The most serious charges facing the only person ever to be convicted for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are reportedly to be dropped because German prosecutors are concerned some US evidence may have come from torture.
According to the British paper The Observer, German authorities will no longer try to put Mounir el Motassadeq, a Moroccan living in the northern port city of Hamburg, behind bars for aiding al Qaeda terrorists before they crashed hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington in 2001.
Motassadeq had been convicted on charges of accessory to commit murder in 3,066 cases and membership in a terrorist organization in February 2003. But he was freed from his 15-year prison term in April after being granted a retrial. The court said defense attorneys for Motassadeq should have access to interrogation records from alleged Sept. 11 planners Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who are currently in US custody.
And that's where the trouble for prosecutors starts, since German courts cannot accept evidence if it is thought to come under duress or torture. A senior German intelligence official reportedly told The Observer that the inability to prove the testimony was admissible would make it worthless.
"They contain no details as to where Binalshibh and Mohammed were questioned, nor whether torture or other forms of force were used to make them talk," he said, saying German courts would be extremely tough after the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal in Iraq. "Their contents may be information and they may be disinformation."
The latest legal difficulties could strain ties between German and US authorities, who have been irked by Germany's inability to make progress against Motassadeq and others linked to the Hamburg terror cell. For their part, the Germans have been frustrated by US reluctance to supply the evidence in the first place.
"In Germany, any use of force to produce a statement is unlawful,"
story/ also/archived(?)
~Wow. Strange ideas about the rule of law can really mess with the pursuit of justice. Obviously the Department of Justice of the United States doesn't work under the same contraints. Until very recently neither did the State of Illinois. (I don't know about the other 49 states' rules concerning coercion of suspects and witnesses.)
Another reason why America and not countries like Germany is destined to rule the world?
Torturing Children
We took thousands of innocent civilians off the streets in Iraq and threw them into hellhole prisons, where they were beaten, raped, and killed. This story has faded from public view because no new pictures of the abuses have come out in the last several weeks. Those pictures are out there, and they show the rape and torture of children. The international media is reporting on it. Coalition ally Norway may be preparing to flee Iraq because of the allegations regarding these children.
Where is the American news media? Where are the pictures? Who is responsible for this abomination? Torturing children in the name of freedom? Is this what we have become?
Photographic and videotape evidence of this torture is currently in the hands of the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the U.S. Congress and the White House. It must be released.
article
~God bless the USA. God bless the people we've tortured. God bless the families and communities to which the torturers will return.
The Viet Nam War brought drug addiction, exotic strains of venereal disease, ["Honey, I'm home!"] and post-traumatic-stress-disorder to Main Street America. I wonder what the Iraqi Vets, both male & female, will be bringing home?
Off the Radio: Pre-War "Intelligence Failures"
"In determining what the president was told about the contents of the N.I.E. dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, qualifiers and all, there is nothing clearer than this single page," Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in a 10-page "additional view" that was published as an addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on Friday.
John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence, said last week that he believed that the C.I.A. should have included more caveats in the 2002 intelligence estimate, particularly in a section that summarized its key judgments. On Tuesday, a senior intelligence official said of the presidential summary: "We expect people to read beyond one page.''
article reported on Harry Shearer's LeShow
July 19, 2004
UK: Satellites to Track Persistent Criminals
...“the end of the 1960s liberal consensus” on law and order.
The (five-year) plan will include a major expansion of tagging, with satellite technology being used to track the 5,000 serial offenders who, according to the Home Office, account for almost 10% of crime in England and Wales.
Criminals whose activities have the greatest impact on their local communities will be singled out.
The new technology will also be used to tag sex offenders and perpetrators of domestic violence.
press release
Who is Rupert Murdoch?
How one right-wing billionaire uses his business and media empire to pursue a partisan agenda at the expense of democracy
article / for more of Murdoch's magic see: links
~It never fails to amaze me how much influence foreign individuals and countries have over American politics (the Moonies, Senor Bush's Kuwaities, Clinton's Chinese) while the majority of Americans are proudly xenophobic. How do the politicians get away with it?
~Would you buy a new war from this man?
Coast Guard: Kids Dangle From Meat Hooks for Fun
Law enforcement officials in the Florida Keys are mystified by a bizarre new pastime -- young people dangling themselves from meat hooks on a popular sandbar ( off Whale Harbour in Islamorada).
They found that five young people had erected a bamboo tripod and hung meat hooks from it. A young woman, her feet brushing the surface of the shallow water, dangled from the frame, hooks embedded firmly in her shoulders.
According to a Coast Guard video, she did not seem to mind the hooks.
Lieutenant Tom Brazil of the Coast Guard told the Key West Citizen newspaper that a young man, who also had hooks embedded in his heavily pierced and tattooed skin, assured him the group was "just enjoying the afternoon."
A Coast Guard spokeswoman in Miami said the group had clearly done this before and intended to post photos of themselves on a Web site dedicated to "body modification" -- the ritualistic piercing of the body.
story
~Mom: "Well Janey, what did you do today?"
Janey: "Nothing much, hung around at the beach."
Any chance that 'Coast Guard video' winds up being sold on late-night tv? An inevitable(?) variation of "Girls Gone Wild"?
Austria Issues Schwarzenegger Stamp
story
~Reminds me of those countries in Africa and the Caribbean that printed stamps of the Beatles.
Feedback Loop: MoveOn's Use of Interactive Maps...
...to illustrate participation in their campaign events. The maps are a great way to visualize the scale of the event and provide feedback to the participants and the media.
In Stamen Design’s latest project for MoveOn, the map of feedback has itself become the means of participation.
On June 28, over 55,000 people in 4,600 house parties participated in an online conversation with Michael Moore about his film Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore spoke over a live, RealAudio feed while users asked questions via the map interface. User questions and responses to questions were displayed on the map in real time.
link to post w/ more links to MoveOn, Stam