March 31, 2005
Southern Cinemas Reject IMAX 'Volcanoes' Film Over Passing Reference to Evolution
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (AP) -- IMAX theaters in several Southern cities have decided not to show a film on volcanoes out of concern that its references to evolution might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs.
~God bless 'em. More jobs in the sciences for my kids and grandkids.
And who by brave assent, who by accident,
who in solitude, who in this mirror,
who by his lady's command, who by his own hand,
who in mortal chains, who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?
[image via google search 'creation'/
lyric Leonard Cohen]
March 30, 2005
Officer Had Nude Photos of Suspect
He downloaded them off her cell phone after her DWI arrest, document shows.
story/ also here ('Nude Pics Put Cops In a Fix')
via/archived at politech
Secrets
Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) introduced a baffling bill to
exempt livestock identification information collected by the
Department of Agriculture from disclosure under the Freedom of
Information Act.
See: link via secrecy news 03/23/05
~Imagine what terrorists could do with 'downer cow' statistics?
Grey Lodge Occult Review
You Are Here.
[image via google/ not with antiquities]
The Ten Major Principles of the Gnostic Revelation
The Gnostic Christians of the second century believed that only a special revelation of knowledge rather than faith could save a person. The contents of this revelation could not be received empirically or derived a priori. They considered this special gnosis so valuable that it must be kept secret. Here are the ten major principles of the gnostic revelation:
1. The creator of this world is demented.
2. The world is not as it appears, in order to hide the evil in it, a delusive veil obscuring it and the deranged deity.
3. There is another, better realm of God, and all our efforts are to be directed toward
a: returning there
b: bringing it here
Exegesis excerpts by Philip K. Dick, 1974-1982
found through Justin Lincoln's Desiring Machine
[photo via desiring machine/ not with exegesis]
Queer Geek Identity Caucus
Anna Mattinson (UC Santa Cruz)
Are you Geeky and Queer? Is your method of self-expression nonexistent or considered obscure, extreme, nonsensical, mathematical, anti-social, or otherwise conflicting with mainstream or popular queerdom? Is your idea of an enjoyable evening discussing Star Trek episodes, playing RPGs, watching anime, reading fantasy novels, or something else that your other queer friends just don't seem to understand? The Queer Geek identity caucus is a safe space for us to come together and talk about the issues about being a Queer Geek in a supportive environment. We ask that only those who identify as Queer Geeks attend.
more 2005 Western Regional (LGBTQIA) College Conference programs thanks diederik growing up sexually
~Wait till you're out of school you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who cares if you're alive or dead let alone geeky but not queer, queer but not geeky, or queer and geeky.
Must I choose?
[image via google, not with programs]
Florida Law Could Let Students Sue for Untolerated Beliefs
Capitol bill aims to control ‘leftist’ profs
TALLAHASSEE — Republicans on the House Choice and Innovation Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to pass a bill that aims to stamp out “leftist totalitarianism” by “dictator professors” in the classrooms of Florida’s universities.
The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, passed 8-to-2 despite strenuous objections from the only two Democrats on the committee.
While promoting the bill Tuesday, Baxley said a university education should be more than “one biased view by the professor, who as a dictator controls the classroom,” as part of “a misuse of their platform to indoctrinate the next generation with their own views.”
The bill sets a statewide standard that students cannot be punished for professing beliefs with which their professors disagree. Professors would also be advised to teach alternative “serious academic theories” that may disagree with their personal views.
According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, the law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.
"Conservative academic critic David Horowitz has proposed state
laws to prevent discrimination against conservative political ideas
in the classroom (such as creationist alternatives to evolution), and
of course, there are some narrow-minded professors around, but
such a law would be hard to word, and no state has so far taken up
the challenge. But this week, a committee of the F State's House
of Representatives approved such a bill, which will likely pass the
full House. Not just creationists are protected, of course. A
student who believes, say, that the Holocaust didn't happen, or
who doesn't believe in germ theory or birth control, or who thinks
astrology is underregarded by astronomers (or even someone who
believes that men should not menstruate in order to live longer),
could actually sue a professor who the student felt was
disrespectful of the ideas." --link and 'brief' from Chuck Shepard at News of the Weird Pro
Jewel Beetle Flies Into the Inferno
...the jewel beetle, or Melanophila acuminate...distinguishing characteristic is that it craves fire, for breeding purposes. At the first sign of a conflagration, apparently, all jewel beetles in the area fly straight into it and have a huge orgy.*
It does not come as any surprise that the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) in the US can see the massive military potential for a new generation of supersensitive, miniature, robust, uncooled, infrared detectors inspired by a humble heat-seeking beetle.
story *News of the Weird Pro Edition
March 29, 2005
Overheard at Starbucks
"The 'war on drugs' started in the 1960's?"
-"Well Nixon gave it a real shot-in-the-arm."
"So if after 35 years and billions of tax-dollars spent and millions of people jailed there's still illegal drugs to be had...doesn't that suggest that today's drug dealers would have to be connected...friends and family of cops, politicians and law enforcement bureaucrats?"
--"The successful ones anyway."
-"No there's just an endless succession of drug-crazed free-lancers, small-timers and dupes of foreign cartels which American law enforcement on all levels has been prevented by international treaties and leaky borders from stopping."
"Then the US Military's involved too?"
-"Have you ever heard of drug-sniffing dogs inside a bank vault?"
--"I luv the '80's! 'I would do anything ...for love, but I won't do that.'"
Fun With Photoshop
ducktape rolled on scanner; cropped & resized
photoshop cropped, resized & filtered:
View image View image View image View image
Call It Initiative
link to links
~Links to two stories of artists, Banksey and Vallance, having fun with art institutions. 'Pranking's' all the rage these days but who hasn't thought about doing something or bringing something to a public space? I'm not talking about vandalism skin-heads. There're miles and miles of rooms and galleries out there just waiting for YOUR concept!?
Artist's Conception:
Presenting Soap-on-a-Rope to the King of Tonga. 2001
Marker on paper, 8 1/2 x 11"
[image via gallery not from above]
March 28, 2005
Bush's End of Life Decisions Unequal
Just last week in Texas a 6-month-old baby died when doctors removed a breathing tube against a mother's wishes. State law in Texas has given hospital ethics boards the power to determine when doctors may suspend life-sustaining care, regardless of an individual's stated desires or a family's beliefs. In taking this decision away from the family and putting it in the hands of hospital administrators, the Texas legislature made the unambiguous statement that state government did not support an absolute right to life.
Gov. George W. Bush signed this bill into law in 1999.
Army Documents Shed Light on CIA 'Ghosting'
Systematic concealment of detainees is found.
According to statements investigators took from soldiers and officers who worked at the prison, a stream of ghost detainees began arriving in September 2003, after military intelligence officers and the CIA came to an arrangement that kept the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations from knowing the detainees existed.
The investigative documents show that Col. Thomas M. Pappas and Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the top two military intelligence officers at the prison, took part in discussions with the CIA on how to handle agency detainees.
Pappas and Jordan are still under investigation, and Army officials said they believe a decision about whether to discipline them could come by the end of the month.
Keeping ghost detainees was harshly criticized by Army investigators who looked into abuse at the prison, and human rights groups condemn the practice. The Red Cross regularly inspects prisons and is supposed to have access to all inmates to ensure their rights are protected.
The most recent Pentagon review of detainee abuse was released this month by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III, who told reporters that his probe found 30 cases in which prisoners were held off the books..
~The article doesn't say what happened to the 30 prisoners/cases or where these people might be now.
Note that the article's limited to 'ghosting' of CIA prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Are there similar CIA arrangements with the US Military or with foreign armed-forces in other countries? See Aboard Air CIA for the larger picture.
"Ghosting" is not the same as "disappearing", except for the 'ghosts' and their families.
Does anyone know how many people the CIA have kidnapped since 9/11? Best guess? It's not kidnapping because they're fighting terrorism.
[image via google/not with article]
We Don't Do That Here
blindfold suspects
Two men sit blindfolded and hand cuffed in the back of a police car as they are arrested in central Baghdad. An Iraqi man who was formally kidnapped saw the men and recognized them as his abductors.(AFP/Sabah Arar) @
~American police will be doing this soon? Will American newspapers be reluctant to print photos of blindfolded American suspects? The 'perp-walk' has almost disappeared as a staple of front page news and tv reports, replaced by mugshots of the perp. Criminals enjoyed it a little too much? Viewers too readily confused the suspects with celebrities?
We Don't Do That Here
pose with burning vehicles, that is
An Iraqi youth poses with the wreckage after a car bomb attack in eastern Mosul, Iraq, Sunday, March 27, 2005. One U.S. military vehicle was damaged and two soldiers were slightly injured, according to witnesses. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ibrahim) @
~Maybe during celebrations of sports championships?
Mr. Bush & His Easter Rebellion
"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16.
I send greetings to all those celebrating Easter, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through His sacrifice and triumph over death, Christ lifted the sights of humanity forever. In His teachings, the poor have heard hope, the proud have been challenged, and the weak and dying have found assurance. Today, the words of Jesus continue to comfort and strengthen Christians around the world.
Many - though by no means anywhere near a majority - who believe in these words will find it wonderful that the President has repeated them in the exercise of his public office. Mr. Bush and his political advisors know this, and clearly used the opportunity of his weekly radio address to further cement the bond between the President and those who want to turn America into "a Christian nation."
~Christian Nationalism?
image via google
March 27, 2005
Luke Chueh
LUKE CHUEH VERSUS THE FUNNY CLUB
Acrylic + Ink on Plastic "Funny Club" Figurine
Approx. 3" Tall
2004
paintings/merchandise via nasty start.org
~The Plush Life subjected to iconoclasm. I'm not sure what's the point. But then I've never been oppressed by the cute.
Report: TSA Misled Public on Passenger Data
The report comes at a sensitive time for the TSA, (Transportation Security Agency) which is using airline passenger data — which can include credit card information, phone number and address — to test a computerized system for screening passengers, called Secure Flight.
Between February 2002 and June 2003, TSA had a role in 14 transfers of data involving at least 12 million records obtained without passengers’ knowledge or permission from America West, American Airlines, Continental, Delta, Frontier and JetBlue.
However, the report concluded, in only one case was a passenger’s data inappropriately revealed to the public.
story [scroll down?]
~TSA lied? Yet no laws were broken? From what sorts of legal restrictions are security agencies exempt?
By the way, "The report, (was) released Friday by Homeland Security Department..."
I wonder if reports of credit-card fraud and stolen identities will be traced back to this year-and-a-half long TSA Secure Flight test?
Syllabus Finder Search Results
sermon on the mount Estimated number of matches: 674
chocolate Estimated number of matches: 2180
Syllabus Finder Search Results
torture Estimated number of matches: 2180
Pentagon Will Not Try 17 G.I.'s Implicated in Prisoners' Deaths
Washington - Despite recommendations by Army investigators, commanders have decided not to prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004...
In one of the three cases in which no charges are to be filed, the commanders determined the death to be "a result of a series of lawful applications of force." In the second, the commanders decided not to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. In the third, they determined the soldier involved had not been well informed of the rules of engagement.
Of the 28 deaths investigated, 13 occurred in American detention centers in those countries and 15 occurred at the point where prisoners were captured. Only one occurred in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq...
The Army said one of the three deaths for which soldiers would not be prosecuted was that of a former Iraqi lieutenant colonel determined by investigators to have died of "blunt force injuries and asphyxia" at an American Forward Operating Base in Al Asad, Iraq, in January 2004.
In that case, Army investigators had recommended that 11 soldiers from the Fifth Special Forces Group and the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment face charges. The decision not to prosecute in that case, as well as one other, was made by the Army Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., the Army said.
The Army accounting said the Special Forces Command had determined that the use of force had been lawful "in response to repeated aggression and misconduct by the detainee."
The senior Army legal official said the prisoner's resistance to his captors' instructions had caused them to gag him and to lift him to his feet with the baton, actions that contributed to the death.
press release
~Esprit de corps is necessary for a smooth-running fighting and detaining (sic) machine. I imagine hundreds of soldiers and former-soldiers are feeling much better about their tours-of-duty today.
[Same Story, More Details March 25, 2005]
Army’s Own Documents Acknowledge Evidence That Soldiers Used Torture
Government is Manipulating Release of Torture Documents in an Attempt to Minimize Scandal, ACLU Charges
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today charged that the government is attempting to bury the torture scandal involving the U.S. military by failing to comply with a court order requiring release of documents to the ACLU. The documents the government does release are being issued in advance to the media in ways calculated to minimize coverage and public access, the ACLU said.
The reason for the delay in delivering the more than 1,200 pages of documents was evident, the ACLU said, in the contents, which include reports of brutal beatings, "exercise until exhaustion" and sworn statements that soldiers were told to "beat the fuck out of" detainees.
The documents were supposed to have been turned over to the ACLU on March 21, but were not released to the ACLU until late on a Friday of what for many is a holiday weekend. Select reporters received a CD-ROM with the documents before they were given to the ACLU.
~Friday is 'bad news day' for the rich and powerful. Schlemiels and schmucks get exposed early in the week.
March 26, 2005
Shakespeare's Birds in the USA
In 1890, American Eugene Schieffelin dreamed of Shakespeare's birds warbling their 'Old World' songs on the tree branches of his nation, so he imported one hundred starlings from England and released them into the skies of New York City...
[caption @]
...the European Starling has become one of the most numerous birds on the North American continent. Its successful spread is believed to have come at the expense of many native birds that compete with the starling for nest holes.
photo and "All About" the European Starling link see also Avian Immigrants and their impact in the United States
~It's odd that Eugene Schieffelin and the NY club that so altered America's bird population is not well known, considering. (Perhaps the many ways his name can be spelled spared him notoriety?)
I learned today that probably the first bird I saw as a child and the one most US city dwellers are familiar with, the "House Sparrow" is also one of Mr. Schieffelin's.
I have to pay attention to people's ideals and visions. The news is filled with stories of greed, lust, vanity and hatred, but those stories are only a small part of the spectrum of human desires that can affect our lives.
UK: School Bans "Wrong Race" Hair Style
EXCLUDED: Olivia Acton
Middleton Technology College headteacher Allison Crompton confirmed that braided hairstyles were generally banned in the school but she would make exceptions for hairstyles which are a reflection of cultural heritage rather than a fashion statement.
Ms Crompton said: "We don't allow any extreme hairstyles of any description at the school. We are a high-achieving school with high standards and we don't allow any street culture into school.
"We are very strict on appearance. Wearing a school uniform signals that children are ready and willing to be a part of the school community. We have smart children who work in a purposeful way because that's the ethos of the school."
~"And the beat goes on. Yeah the beat goes on."
The United States of Jesus
..a few of the protesters who have followed DeLay, Frist and the fundamentalists into the maw of the Schiavo struggle. While the polls say some 80% of Americans do not approve of the congressional sideshow that has been playing out on this issue, DeLay and his crew know where their collective bread is buttered. People like those depicted above make up the backbone of the GOP, the hard-right flank that always always always votes, and votes Republican.
~Dour warnings from William Pitt about the Repuplicans radical right. Jesus transvestites are scary and when the spirit comes upon them watch out!
I like the idea of Republican business-types kissing fundamentalist ass. The sins of glutttony, avarice and pride are among the most colorful. They put on a good show.
March 25, 2005
Thinking Sex:
Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality
by Gayle Rubin
outline thanks diederik @ growing up sexually
"Let's talk about sex baby."
[image via google/ not with outline]
John Gilmore on National ID Cards & Freedoms of Assembly, Travel
"No law requires me to have an ID. I don't have one, precisely because I want to be the canary in the coal mine. I want to know how many rights an honest, hard-working, un-documented person still has. The only way to find out is to live that way. I'll tell you what I've learned."
link politech / toad hall web site
~John Gilmore performance artist.
[image via google/ not with link; not John Gilmore]
Overheard at Starbucks
"He had the heartless eyes of a man loved more than anything else in the world."
NC Cities Want to Sue Over Public Record Requests
(03/20/05 - RALEIGH) — North Carolina cities and other government agencies are pursuing the authority to sue citizens who ask to see public records.
Lawyers for local governments and the University of North Carolina are talking about pushing for a new state law allowing pre-emptive lawsuits against citizens, news organizations and private companies to clarify the law when there is a dispute about providing records or opening meetings.
On another front, the city of Burlington is appealing a ruling last year by the state Court of Appeals that said the government can't take people to court to try to block their access to records or meetings.
Citizens can sue the government over records, the court said, but not the reverse. The state Supreme Court takes up that case next month and is expected to settle the issue.
North Carolina's League of Municipalities supports Burlington. "It makes sense to ask a court what the law is when there's a dispute about the Open Meetings Law, just like when there's a dispute about anything else," said Ellis Hankins, the league's executive director.
"We need to have open government," he said. "But governments need to operate. And there are unanswered legal questions."
The cities say they want to use an ordinary tool often deployed in other kinds of legal disputes, called a "declaratory judgment," to let judges settle disagreements about public access to records or meetings.
Urging the Supreme Court to forbid pre-emptive government lawsuits are news organizations and civil rights advocates on the political left, right and center.
They include the state's newspapers and broadcasters, the conservative John Locke Foundation, and the liberal American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.
Many say they will also oppose any legislation that would give the government that power, saying it would intimidate and punish inquisitive citizens. They say pre-emptive access lawsuits are undemocratic and contrary to the state's policy of open government.
They also argue that such lawsuits penalize citizens for exercising their First Amendment constitutional rights to criticize the government and to ask it to address their concerns.
In the Burlington case, Alamance News publisher Tom Boney had challenged the closing of a city council meeting to the public in 2002. Boney asked the city to disavow the secrecy and release minutes of the meeting. And he said he might sue.
Burlington beat Boney to it. At the time, no state statute or court ruling prevented the city from doing that.
The city's lawsuit against the newspaper required Boney to spend money defending it. The lawsuit also asked the judge to make Boney pay the city's lawyer.
"A government body should not be permitted to bully citizens who object to its actions or who argue for an interpretation of the law that differs from the position taken by the public body," the newspaper's attorney, Raleigh media lawyer Hugh Stevens, said in a recent court filing. "It is simply wrong for a public body to use the blunt club of the judicial system to silence and intimidate those who disagree."
Part of the problem is that state law provides no mechanism for cities to get a court ruling in a dispute over access to records or meetings other than to sue the people or companies seeking the information -- unless the requesters sue first. In some other states, cities can sue the state attorney general to get a ruling.
In filings with the N.C. Supreme Court, Burlington and North Carolinas other cities say they must be free to sue requesters for declaratory judgment to resolve disputes.
In its ruling against Burlington last year, a Court of Appeals panel of three judges concluded that allowing the government to file pre-emptive access lawsuits would create "a chilling effect on the public."
The court also ruled that requiring members of the public to defend the lawsuits in lengthy court actions would undermine the fundamental right of every person to have prompt access to information in the possession of public agencies.
And such lawsuits, the appeals court suggested, would violate the aim of state sunshine laws "of promoting openness in the daily workings of public bodies."
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case April 19
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/news/032005_APstate_publicrecords.html/ via/archived @ politech
~I'm guessing individual citizens and competing contractors are 'bombing' local municipalities with nuisance FOIA requests. Copying old records is expensive.
What I don't understand is the assumption that city council meetings can be closed to the public. Are muncipalities piggy-backing their desires for secrecy onto the budget threatening FOIA requests business?
PaleoJudaica.com
"A weblog on ancient Judaism and its context" link
~Having a place on this earth, a sense of history more than a few generations old, is something most Americans can't know. And yet there are nations where ordinary individuals claim lineage and land that goes back a thousand years.
I'm not possessed by ancestors, ancestral lands;
I'm haunted by open spaces and speed.
[image via google/ not from link above]
Syllabus Finder Search Results
foucault Estimated number of matches: 2630
The Foucault Society
"I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area... I would like the little volume that I want to write on disciplinary systems to be useful to an educator, a warden, a magistrate, a conscientious objector. I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers."
link to resources
~A spanner in the works?
"Let's talk about systems of social control, baby".
[image via google/ NOT from society]
Secrets of Ex-Nazis Chilean Fiefdom
Paul Schaefer was a medic in Hitler's army during World War II. After the war, he set up an evangelical ministry and a youth home, purportedly to care for war orphans.
But he was charged with sexually abusing two boys - and in 1961 he fled to Chile, reportedly accompanied by some 70 followers.
There, in a lush valley in the Andean foothills, he set up Colonia Dignidad - now renamed Villa Baviera.
...Mr Schaefer's story is not confined to the perimeter fence of the colony - topped with barbed wire, studded with searchlights, and overlooked by a watchtower.
It goes right to the heart of the Chilean state during the iron rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s - a period with which Chileans are still struggling to come to terms today.
Former political prisoners of Gen Pinochet have testified to a warren of stone-walled tunnels under the colony, where they were taken to be tortured with electric shocks to the strains of Wagner and Mozart.
The Truth and Justice Commission, which investigated human rights abuses during Gen Pinochet's rule, backs such allegations.
Dissidents say they were tortured in bunkers at Colonia Dignidad
~This will make a great movie.
Moreover it's convinced me that domestic arrangements of men, women and children in which political favors are cultivated and where communication with the outside world is controlled lead to child abuse. Nazis have their distinctive forms of child abuse, while Christians awaiting the Rapture and UFO cultists have their's.
Only Nazis and terrorists utilize bunkers?
March 24, 2005
Passion of Christ NASCAR
from Februrary 2004
"...there's a lot of crossover between the demographics of those who watch NASCAR, and those who enjoy the retelling of Jesus' story in ancient languages. With subtitles." @
~When I was growing up watching the movie "The Wizard of Oz" on network tv at Easter-time was an annual family event. These days families get together to share Mell Gibson's vision of "The Passion of Christ"? Is there a causative relationship between intolerance of homosexuality and acceptance of sadism and masochism?
Mercury Study Stripped from Public Documents
When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff.
What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion.
~The paper was handed in late, and furthermore it was 'flawed'.
(Methinks they protesth too much.)
Spoon Collective's Mailing Lists
link to links / more links @ http://www.driftline.org// about pupcrit
~I thought the avant-garde went the way of the Studebaker.
Charles Darwin Has a Posse
free book markers & stickers via the null device
March 23, 2005
The Passion of Christ
~Jesus suffered so we can be saved. Detainees suffer so we are safe. God has blessed the USA. God provides.
DOJ Blocked Criticism of Guantanamo Torture
Justice Redacted Memo on Detainees
FBI criticism of interrogations was deleted.
U.S. law enforcement agents working at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concluded that controversial interrogation practices used there by the Defense Department produced intelligence information that was "suspect at best," an FBI agent told a superior in a memo in May last year.
But the Justice Department, which reviewed the memo for national security secrets before releasing it to a civil liberties group in December, redacted the FBI agent's conclusion.
The department, acting after the Defense Department expressed its own views on which portions of the letter should be redacted, also blacked out a separate assertion in the memo that military interrogation practices could undermine future military trials for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.
FBI agents and officials had complained about the shackling of detainees to the floor for periods exceeding 24 hours, without food and water; the draping of a detainee in an Israeli flag; and the use of growling dogs to scare detainees.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who as White House counsel participated in detailed discussions about the legality of aggressive military interrogation techniques, has twice publicly expressed skepticism about the reliability of these FBI accounts.
But the May 10, 2004, memo, written by an official whose name has not been disclosed, contains a highly detailed account of the efforts that FBI agents made to convince the Defense Department that its interrogation practices were wrongheaded.
Jeffrey Fogel, legal director for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy group that helped organize lawyers for 150 military detainees, said the newly disclosed passages could be used to persuade judges to "look behind" any military assertions during court trials that the suspects had confessed during questioning.
"An awful lot of cases have been built on information obtained through these kind of coercive interrogation techniques," Fogel said.
~It not just about the DOD and Bush Department of Justice appointees approving the use of torture, (they're soldiers, they follow orders; they're Republicans, Jesus gave them blank checks) the detainees they tortured are still incarcerated and facing more years in Guantanamo-type prisons after their military trials. What the Bush Administration is doing is a unique form of inhumanity for a country as modern, as lawyer-ridden, as the USA. It's incredible.
Unfortunately none of the 150 military detainees are in a vegetative state, and had their feeding tubes removed by court order. (Actually we can't know that for certain because the identities of military detainees have not been made public.)
Fun in the Great Outdoors
00/ 01/ 02/ 03/ 04/ 05/ 06/ 07/ 08/ 09
~In the Midwest it's the season of mud but in and around the muck are little surprises. A magnifying glass and a little effort is what's required to see them. With growing things the outcome is not always obvious. A few of these are photos of maple leafs. I think.
Americans Undermine Iraqi Cops
US intelligence and military police officers in Iraq are routinely freeing dangerous criminals in return for a promise to spy on insurgents, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
In one case where the Independent has seen documents, police rescued a doctor after a gun battle with his kidnappers and arrested two of the kidnap gang, who made full confessions. But US military police took over custody of the two men and let them go. The doctor had to flee to Egypt after being threatened by the gang.
~Same as it ever was. Ironically this is standard operating procedure for all police departments. How else could police reward and cultivate informants if they couldn't keep them out of jail? (Or be able to hold the threat of jail over them?) More importantly how would police solve most crimes without a network of criminal informants? (One might also note that organized crime owes alot to the relationships built up over time between police and informants but that's not (yet) the issue here.)
The problem in Iraq is that USAs military police have little interest in Iraqi civilian police matters. A threatened doctor means nothing to an organization that has its own doctors.
In most of the world doctors are important, innocent civilians matter. Local cops have a vested interest in protecting valued citizens and rarely must they defer to military or intelligence police, especially those of an occupying country.
A few more terrorist attacks inside the US and a federal/military police presence like that in Iraq could become a reality here too.
Syllabus Finder Search Results
crucifixion Estimated number of matches: 784
Academy Incorporated
Don't Dream It - Be It!
We can Turn Your Fantasy Into Reality,
- Be Transformed For Hours, A Day or A Week!
border="0" />
"Does the idea of a Reform School where you may relive or rewrite your schooldays as an adult boy or girl appeal to you? (Regardless of the gender you were apparently born into!)
Or formal maid training and certification for work with us and elsewhere?
Are you interested in mail-order books, magazines, implements, audio and video tapes or adult-sized school or maid uniform?
Or do you want to play with human ponies, pets and their fans?"
link [for adult boys & girls 18 years old & older]
~Geez, the idea of reliving my school days brings on nausea and dread. It's difficult to maintain an erection when one's sick to one's stomach.
Is there a nausea fetish? Nausea connoisseurs? (Nauseous connoisseurs, certainly!) Sadists who enjoy watching other people being nauseated? Sadists who enjoy inducing nausea? Could stand-up comedy be a socially acceptable outlet for nausea sadists?
Crucifixion Season
[photos not with press release/ via Eric Lacson]
Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the Mar. 22, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
IT'S CRUCIFIXION season and foreign tourists are in for a treat.
European tourists are especially "curious and interested (to know) if men and women (here) are actually crucified to a cross," said Glenn Biscocho, who has been assisting tourists arriving at the NAIA for the last 13 years.
Biscocho said tourist assistants like him often recommend the crucifixion reenactment in Pampanga province..
If penitents insist on being crucified or whipped, they should get the whip or nails properly sterilized, (said Dr. Luningning Villa, head of the Department of Health's infectious disease unit.)
Villa also warned spectators -- especially tourists -- to protect themselves from sunburn, heatstroke and severe dehydration.
"Be sure to drink lots of fluids," she said
~In Spring a young-man's fancy turns to thoughts of...
I think they should incorporate crucifixions with a lottery. It would increase tourism and add to the drama of the event among the local participants.
Sterilized 20-centimetre nails are driven through the palm of the hands. Some penitents who perform the ritual every year have developed holes on their palms, making the procedure relatively bloodless. Image 15 of 19 via: Eric Lacson
Panata: Lenten Rituals in Cutud, Pampanga link
We Don't Do That Here*
...not publicly, in the streets
"Taiwan...during a new year's parade in a small town near Taichung. I never knew the name of the town because I was on an inter-city bus to somewhere else when the traffic of this procession put a stop to the bus. So I climbed out the back emergency door to photograph the spectacle. The guy is in a trance and to show his possession he beats him lightly with a ball spiked with nails -- sharp ends outward."
@
~*We have extreme sports and reality tv!
The spiked ball caught my attention, I didn't know what it was before reading the caption. It looked like a bright red flower. A nasty flower.
March 21, 2005
Nano Hazards:
Exposure to minute particles harms lungs, circulatory system
... at the Society of Toxicology meeting, where several dozen reports unveiled details about how nanopollutants interact with the body. Most of the studies focused on the effects of lung exposures because the particles' size...
In one especially graphic effect, immune system cells called macrophages trapped nanotubes but then died. The ensuing inflammation scarred lung tissue by creating patches, called granulomas, that entombed the nanotubes.
(John T. James of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston) describes the doses that his team used as "not terribly unrealistic." He estimates that at the current federal limit for inhaled carbon, workers could receive equivalent doses, scaled for body size, in 17 days.
At the meeting, Akinori Shimada of Tottori (Japan) University presented the first series of images depicting nanoparticles moving from lungs into blood. [View image] Within a minute of contacting a mouse lung's tiniest airways, carbon nanoparticles began funneling through tiny gaps between surface cells and burrowing into capillaries.
There, the negatively charged nanoparticles glommed on to red blood cells, which ordinarily carry a positive charge. If this attachment reverses the blood cell's surface charge, Shimada speculates, it could foster clumping—even clots.
Researchers from the University of Rochester (N.Y.) reported an increased susceptibility to clotting in rabbits that had inhaled carbon nanospheres...
~Unless "current federal limits" are tightened 'granuloma' will soon be as familiar a term as carcinoma, while young people will mysteriously start succumbing to blood clots. There will be no cures, but treatments of varying effectiveness will be sold. The industry will not defer profits by spending on better working conditions and safeguarding the health of a few workers through legislation will only slow progress. Science marches on.
[image not with press release/ via google: 'marches']
Lost Son: Finding the Family He Left Behind
Brian's father had taken it for granted that there would be a formal military funeral, but Brian's designated next of kin-and thus the person entitled to make such a decision-was his mother. Rosemarie Slavenas said that it was her responsibility to give her son the funeral that was appropriate for his life. The service she arranged, at the Faith United Methodist Church, in Genoa, was a civilian service, with flowers rather than an American flag on the casket, and no weapons in sight. Afterward, addressing some reporters and cameramen gathered outside the church grounds, Rosemarie Slavenas said, "George Bush killed my son. I believe my son Brian died not for his country but because of our country's lack of a coherent and civilized foreign policy."
Eric Slavenas, a strong supporter of the war, had said that not having "Taps" and a flag-draped casket at Brian's service amounted to "spikes in my dad's and my heart." Many of those who had attended the funeral at Faith United Methodist later walked over to the Genoa Veterans Home, a few blocks away, for a ceremony that included some of the military elements that Ron and Eric Slavenas had counted on-an honor guard and a memorial rifle volley and helicopters flying overhead in a "missing man" formation and a bagpipe playing "The Caissons Go Rolling Along" and a display of Brian's military decorations...
story by Calvin Trillin
~If we don't honor our dead soldiers how will childen and others understand the importance of the American military? The value of war? The need for young people to fight in wars?
[image-cieciel / not with story]
(A Different) V-Girl
"...a prelude to a currently developing concept of creating a cgi based entertainer/celebrity."
link
~I didn't download the player so I can't say how this works BUT check out the automated personality links to get a sense of what's being done with chat bots.
Vivienne: "Your Virtual Girl Friend"
* Vivienne, an interactive companion accessible on powerful,
"third-generation" cellphones, was recently introduced by the Hong
Kong company Artificial Life as a high-maintenance, video-image
"girlfriend" who goes on dates with you, kisses, speaks six
languages, converses on 35,000 topics, accepts flowers and
diamonds, and may even marry you (though you also acquire a
troublesome mother-in-law). Vivienne so far is prudish (no nudity,
no sex), owing to Artificial Life's aim at marketing in modest
cultures, but she will appear in Europe and some U.S. cities by the
end of this year (at about $6 a month plus airtime). Said one Hong
Kong video game player, characterizing Vivienne for the New
York Times, "It's a little bit for the losers." [New York Times, 2-
24-04] via News of the Weird ProEdition
the register/ CNNs press release/ V-girl.com
~Does she come with a choice of skins?
Terri Sciavo
Protesters in support of keeping the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo alive pray outside the Woodside Hospice where Terri lives in a persistent vegetative state on March 18, 2005... (Reuters)
~If the scales were lifted from these people's eyes, they would see that America's military has already 'euthanized' thousands of potential 'Terri Schiavos' in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe they would then rally and hold prayer vigils to prevent future state-sponsored murders all over the world. Miracles happen everyday.
March 20, 2005
No Way No How Not Ever
@~This woman obviously doesn't understand how much of my pay check goes into maintaining the car I need for my daily two+ hour commute to and from work. If I can't get to work, I can't pay the rent...I'm lucky to be employed. And I'm supposed to feel guilty about what's happening to the people in Iraq?
No, no, no way will Americans ever make the connection between something as mundane and as necessary as driving and the death and injury to brown people thousands of miles away. (Sorry I brought it up. "Give-a-hoot! Don't Pollute!")
Vananu Charged With Violating Restrictions
The restrictions, based on the British Mandate State of Emergency Regulations of 1945, prohibit Vanunu from making any contact with foreign nationals, speaking to the media, leaving Israel, coming within 300 meters of a foreign embassy or international borders and even changing his place of residence without approval from Israeli security agencies. Vanunu is also charged of "attempting to leave the country," for his bid to attend Christmas Eve Mass in Bethlehem, in December 2004. Vanunu is not being charged with any security breaches or divulging information concerning Israel's nuclear program, rather, simply for the fact that he granted interviews to international media.
~An example of how America's paragon of democracy in the Middle East treats its whistle-blowing citizens. Iraqis should be so lucky?
Day of Anti-War Protest in Europe
LONDON, England (AP) -- Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters marked the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq with demonstrations across Europe Saturday.
The protests were nowhere near as big as those in February 2003, just before the war, when millions marched in cities around the world to urge U.S. President George W. Bush...not to attack Iraq.
~Note: this CNN reporter doesn't compare today's protests to last year's. Does that mean in newspeak that the turn-out against the war was greater this year than last? Also note the headline's telling us there were no anti-war protests in the USA today.
I'm guessing the editor's at CNN have no relatives in the military in Iraq. When the risk of death or injury is close-by, is personal, subtlety with language is one of the first things to go. And people still insist there's no class distinctions in America.
"In Istanbul, Turkey, an estimated 15,000 people marched in the Kadikoy neighborhood to protest the U.S. presence in Iraq. "Murderer Bush, get out," read one sign.
Two marchers dressed like U.S. soldiers pretended to rough up another, who was dressed as a detainee with a sack on his head, a mimed criticism of prisoner abuse cases."
~I spent an hour looking for a photo of the above "mime criticism", it sounded like a striking image, but with no luck.
[Protesters in London on the second anniversary of the Iraq invasion.]
~This photo and caption ran on CNN but I couldn't find a larger version anywhere.
~By the way the big story on Google News at this hour is DeLay Says He's Not Giving Up Schiavo Fight i.e. Republican Majority Leader's Tom DeLay "would continue to work through the weekend to come up with a bill to force doctors to reinsert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube"
~A snapshot of America's concerns, illuminating its red-state moral priorities? News of one brain-dead woman in peril overshadowing world protests against a war and military occupation that's already cost tens-of-thousands of men, women and children's their lives.
March 19, 2005
A Visual Dictionary of Famous Plane Curves
witch of agnesi
link to table of contents
~Many examples and explanations; they're all here, all your favorites.
Report on Massive Corruption in Iraq
Why Graft Thrives in Postconflict Zones
A report issued Wednesday said Iraq could become 'the biggest corruption scandal in history.'
...earlier this week, it emerged that the Pentagon's auditing agency found that Halliburton, the Houston oil services giant formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, overcharged by more than $108 million on a contract.
A Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, faces a number of investigations for overcharging, including one case where it charged the Army more than $27 million dollars to transport $82,000 worth of fuel from Kuwait to Iraq, according to excerpts of the report released this week by Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California.
In a written statement. Halliburton defended the cost, explaining that delivering the fuel was "fraught with danger."
story By Mark Rice-Oxley; The Christian Science Monitor
~Baby-steps Iraqi gangsters, baby-steps: look at Korea, ya'll have at least 50 years of USA tax-payer funded contracts to gouge and bilk. No hurry, you have powerful friends and lobbyists in Washington to make sure the money doesn't stop. We'll be pulling grandma's off respirators before we ever cut a penny from Pentagon (Terrorism Alert!) funding.
[image via google/ not from above]
Women in Cult Film and on TV
"...films which have cross-dressing or "amazonian" heroines; or whose star/director/writer was rumoured to be lesbian or was popular with lesbians; or which was about lesbians or about female bonding; or had a lesbian character; or was set in an all-female environment — or which, for any other reason, has ever appealed to some of the lesbians for some of the time.
Many of the films listed here are mentioned in the online publications on this site."
~It seems that identity is an important topic for lesbian media critics. What's fascinating is why something so basic to everyone's existence, identity, (who am I?) is NOT the stuff of everyday conversation, of mainstream popular culture.
Is it because heterosexual women's questions about their roles in today's everchanging society have been targeted (almost before they can be asked) by the fashion and other industries to sell product and co-opted by churches in the name of 'family values'?
Questions of identity characterize lesbians while ideals of morality define straight women?
For heterosexual women and men in the West identity is created and maintained while existential questions are silenced through (first in line!) access to the vast array of consumer goods, images and advertiser approved messages specially tailored to their needs.
("I have the thing that's exactly you.")
They sell us the things that we believe (we trust) show us and everyone who we are. Today. (Am I really khaki pants with pleats?)
[image via google]
March 18, 2005
Photo-Caption Non Sequitur
"The monstrous life of dogs with each other: the smallest can get to the biggest, and on occasion the result is puppies. Much more so than we, dogs live among giants and dwarves, who, however are their equals and speak the same language. The things that can happen to them! What gross antipodes try to mate! How afraid they can be, how greatly they feel drawn to the wickedest things! And always their gods at hand, always a whistle and a retreat into the more rigorous world of symbolic burdens. It often seems as though the entire religious existence that we have pictured for ourselves, with devils, dwarves, spirits, angels, and gods, is taken from the real existence of dogs. Whether we have represented our manifold beliefs in them, whether we have become human beings only by keeping dogs- in any event we can tell from them what we ourselves are doing, and presumably most masters are more thankful for this semi-conscious knowledge than for the gods whose names are on their lips."--Elias Canetti, "The Human Province"
[image-google/ text-book]
Federal Agencies Help Shape Hollywood Entertainment
Following the Pentagon, CIA, FBI and other government agencies, the Department of Homeland Security has hired a Hollywood liaison to work with moviemakers and scriptwriters.
Bobbie Faye Ferguson, a onetime actress who worked with Hollywood at NASA for seven years, is now reviewing 14 movie, TV and documentary projects. If she approves of a script or idea, the department will offer advice and technical help to the directors, producers and actors about portraying the nation's homeland defenders.
The Pentagon, which has had an entertainment office since it was created in 1947, often allows moviemakers to film its planes, ships and other equipment.
Phil Strub, who runs the Pentagon's office, says he hopes the movies he works on will "make the American public a little more aware of its military and possibly be of benefit to its recruiting." He disputes the notion that the military interferes with the creative process: "If this was so coercive and onerous, why would people keep coming back?"
~Everyone knows this right? Everyone in America with an IQ over 80 can pretty-much smell out bureaucrat-approved movie scenes?
I'm grateful America's not like one of those socialist nannie-states where big government has to stick it's nose in everywhere.
Maybe the Film Board (whatever it's name) should add a rating or emblem stating when films are USDHS (United States Department of Homeland Security) Approved!
Does the Catholic Chuch still do that with certain books? Marriage manuals?
Isn't Hollywood America's Mecca? Or is that now Las Vegas?
The Age of Missing Information
The Bush administration's campaign against openness.
...in the Bush era...government agencies have restricted access to unclassified information in libraries, archives, Web sites, and official databases. Once freely available, a growing number of these sources are now barred to the public as "sensitive but unclassified" or "for official use only." Less of a goal-directed policy than a bureaucratic reflex, the widespread clampdown on formerly public information reflects a largely inarticulate concern about "security." It also accords neatly with the Bush administration's preference for unchecked executive authority.
article by Steven Aftergood via secrecy news
~What Bush Administration bureaucracies are now doing with unclassified tax-funded information couldn't possible have anything in common with the motives of the people in this photograph from the 1930's. I'm just having a bad day.
[image via google- NOT w/article!]
March 17, 2005
Syllabus Finder Search Results:
nanoparticles Estimated number of matches: 139
Courtrooms Could Host Virtual Crime Scenes
Software called instant Scene Modeler (iSM) re-creates an interactive 3D model from a few hundred frames of a scene captured by a special video camera. Users can zoom in on any object in the 3D model, measure distances between objects and look at scenes from different angles.
Currently investigators try to recreate the scene of the crime in court by sifting through photos or sketches...
The system uses a gun-shaped stereo-camera that consists of two ordinary video cameras aligned at a set distance from each other. This enables the depth of the captured scene to be calculated at every point, just as a pair of eyes gauges distances.
SIFT very quickly identifies common features in sequential images...allowing separate 3D images to be transformed into a virtual 3D world. The virtual world is rendered by a graphics gaming card inside an ordinary laptop or PC.
Crime Scene Model gif
~Jurors will need help in understanding how to view these models. In a short time (for certain groups of people) these images will be as famliar, as 'genuine' as photographs?
There will have to be legal assurances...legislation will need to be enacted...that the videos and the programs weren't tampered with, that the "chain of evidence" was preserved.
For those defendants who can afford it, experts at refuting SIFT 'evidence' will become available.
For the vast majority of cases SIFT will be a powerful visual tool for the prosecution. I don't see police departments using it as much as the prosecution to build their cases.
SIFT also looks like a promising new animation technique. if it's cheap enough.
Tiger Snaps Back at Hidden Camera
A camera hidden in the Sumatran rainforest has survived the rage of a tiger attack unscathed...
The tiger sees the camera and moves in to investigate. He takes a big bite - the flash goes off in his mouth - before deciding enough is enough.
~Don't they understand it's for their own good?
White House Ignores Congressional Rulings on Fake News
Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, who said video news releases "are the television equivalent of the printed press release."
"They can be a cost-effective means to distribute information through local news outlets, and their use by private and public entities has been widespread since the early 1990s, including by numerous federal agencies," Bradbury said.
Comptroller General David Walker of the GAO said Monday that his agency is "disappointed by the administration's actions" in telling agency heads to ignore the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.
Comptroller General David Walker of the GAO said Monday that his agency is "disappointed by the administration's actions" in telling agency heads to ignore the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.
"This is not just a legal issue, it's also an ethical matter," Walker said. "The taxpayers have a right to know when the government is trying to influence them with their own money."
~"Journalists? We don' need no stinkin' journalists."
USA Cities & Towns Holding Mar.18-20 Anti-war Events
Below is a list of 583 towns and cities, in all 50 states, that are holding events on the two-year anniversary of the Iraq War. The number and geographic spread of these events reflect the growing breadth of the anti-war movement; last year, on the first anniversary of the war, 319 cities and towns across the United States...
link via William Pitt's article Vengeance & the Butchers's Bill
Mission Accomplished
[image via google not w/article]
Nukes in the News!
Representative Chris Cannon of Utah, a Republican, called in an
interview with the Salt Lake Tribune for the resumption of nuclear
weapons testing. Cannon is in favor not only of testing the new nuclear bunker busters the Bush administration wants to build, but feels that the tests “should also include the existing nuclear stockpile to ensure the weapons have not deteriorated.”
In addition to this statement, Robert Gehrke reported Cannon’s belief in a link between democracy and nuclear weapons. Cannon finds that “What we really want here is deterrence. We want people to get out of their holes and into the democratic process and we want to scare them out…We need to give them the fear of destruction and hopefully over time people will recognize that the democratic system works.”
the above via Nuclear Test Watch No.6
[gif via carol moore]
Cannon Supports Nuke Testing in Nevada
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Though Rep. Chris Cannon believes the cancer that took his father's life was due in part to radioactive fallout from the atomic-bomb testing in Nevada, he is supporting resumption of nuclear tests.
"To the degree that we have people blow up our skyscrapers and hiding underground we have to have the ability to respond to them," Cannon told the Salt Lake Tribune (March 8, 2005) Tuesday in Washington. "I don't ever expect we'll end up using a bunker buster, but the other side needs to know that we have them."
"With nuclear testing you have to be very careful," he said.
As an attorney in 1979, Cannon worked with former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and others to put together a lawsuit demanding compensation from the government for "Downwinders" allegedly sickened by exposure to radiation.
The case was lost on the ground of government immunity, but Congress later approved compensation payments to the Downwinders. The government so far has approved 8,744 claims from residents who have blamed their cancers on fallout.
~You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, Bushie?
Syllabus Finder Search Results:
pornography [Estimated number of matches: 3230]
Syllabus Finder Search Window
March 16, 2005
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Weblog
View the film 'Submission'/link to weblog
In the left column 'Poll' you can vote on the question:
"Do you think it's right that Hirsi Ali continues her work on the film Submission part II 'Shortcut to enlightenment"?
Possible answers: 1:yes, 2:no, 3:yes but not yet, 4:I don't know
~Diederik explains: (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) "...given a new secret home, is allowed and motivated to produce a sequel to "Submission part one", a judge ruled. The first movie arguably led to the murder of its moviemaker*(who incidentally did not live to see the premiere of his movie about a previous murder of Dutch politicus Pim Fortuijn)."
See also on Spitting Image from Nov. 3, 2004 "Dutch Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh* Murdered"
March 15, 2005
PETTER HEGRE -- MY WIFE
"...chronicles a monogamist fascination with a single extraordinary blonde."
scroll down and click I AGREE to access 100+ photographs
~It's not like what's sung about in pop-music.
These photos look like the real thing.
Governor Calls for Return of National Guard Troops from Iraq
"He's figured out how to use the wildfire season to protest the Iraq war," said Bob Keenan, the state Senate Republican leader. "It's an antiwar statement and condemnation of Bush's actions."
The governor and his supporters deny those accusations in a growing political battle that comes as weather experts say a seven-year drought and a severely reduced snowpack could lead to a devastating summer of wildfires.
Maria Martins
Even long after my death
Long after your death
I want to torture you
I want the thought of me
to coil around your body like a serpent of fire...
I want the nostalgia of my presence to paralyse you.
La femme a perdu son ombre A mulher perdeu sua sombra [The woman has lost her shadow] 1946
~Her poem summons up that time in recent Western history when crazy-love could be shared as art.
March 14, 2005
Fun in the Great Outdoors
In beauty may I walk...
In beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
On the trailed marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.
With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.
A Navajo Indian Prayer @
Stray Voltage Sensor
...designed to detect stray voltage near manhole covers and utility poles before pedestrians get hurt.
...(the) SVD1000 can sense voltages as low as 5 volts -- a fraction of the power needed to run a toaster oven. The sensor is meant to be towed behind a utility truck at 20 m.p.h., speeding up inspections now done on foot.
"Effectively, it's an antenna that searches for electromagnetic fields" within a 25-foot radius, said Christos Polyzois, Sarnoff's senior director of commercial systems.
But Con Edison may be in for a jolt of its own. Sarnoff is asking about $500,000 for each unit.
~This sensor will soon be combined with metal detectors to stop the use of camera-phones and other recording devices in schools, corporate and government offices?
Signs of Innocence
David Protess, a Northwestern University journalism professor whose work has resulted in several overturned convictions, uses five criteria to gauge whether or not a person may be innocent. The following chart lists these criteria, and tells how they apply to three individual cases...
~It ain't rocket science. Makes you wonder who benefits from putting innocent people in prison? (Or is the problem more who isn't punished when innocent people are convicted?)
Eyewitness Identification
"I'm Absolutely Positive": In late 2004, two men who had
been convicted of rape based on confident identifications by the
victims (Wilton Dedge of Florida and Dennis Brown of Louisiana)
were exonerated after having served 22 and 19 years, respectively,
before DNA evidence showed that the crimes were almost certainly
committed by others. In the trials, Dedge's accuser had stuck to
her recollection even after six alibi witnesses had come forward,
and Brown's accuser said she observed her rapist's face up close
for 20 minutes and was certain Brown was the man. [St. Petersburg
Times, 2-4-05] [Chicago Tribune, 2-17-05]
"Mistaken identification by eyewitnesses was a factor in nearly 90 percent of the nation's first 70 convictions overturned by DNA testing, according to the New York-based Innocence Project, which works to free the wrongly convicted.
...lineups rarely happen as they do on police shows, with suspects standing side by side. Witnesses more often are asked to identify suspects from a group of mug shots shown all at once.
The Virginia State Crime Commission, a legislative advisory body, is asking law enforcement agencies instead to adopt a procedure in which witnesses are shown possible suspects or their mug shots one at a time by an investigator who does not know who the true suspect is. Such simple changes can cut mistaken identifications by half or more, studies have shown.
"This would put Virginia on the cutting edge of policy to try to eliminate misidentifications," said Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle (R-Virginia Beach), the commission's vice chairman. New Jersey, North Carolina and Boston have adopted the procedure, and a smattering of other jurisdictions are testing it."
press release "Revamping Police Line-ups"
[sign-in/register: unknown/unknown]
everything above via News of the Weird Pro Edition
~Overworked, lazy and incompetent cops along with compliant, 'suggestive' witnesses and victims are putting innocent people in prison. May their God give each and every one a special blessing.
Sensors on Bombing Range Saving Lives
YUMA, Ariz. A specially designed surveillance system that tracks and pinpoints movement on the Barry M. Goldwater Range is saving lives and money for the Marine Corps.
The military says that in the first month alone, the system detected 382 people inside of "impact areas" -- places on the range where live fire or dummy ordnance is dropped.
The system has a rotational radar that looks for moving objects every 12 seconds in a ten-kilometer zone. If it detects something five times in a row, than a red dot appears on a computer screen at the system's command center.
Using a global positioning system, Marines know the exact location of the object and can use a camera to zoom in on the unidentified object.
The Marines who monitor the system don't deal with the people on the range. Once someone is spotted, they alert the proper authorities to prevent any mishaps.
The surveillance system was installed on the range last year. It was designed by Scottsdale's Sensor Technologies and Systems and costs 100-thousand dollars.
http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=3068421
~This press release doesn't explain the camera that zooms in on the unidentified object. Are Marines using the radar's GPS in their vehicles to drive out to a convenient overlook where they take pictures? Is there a camera on a pole on a mountain top overlooking the ten-kilometer-sized range that's operated remotely using the GPS from the rotational radar? More than one radar controlled zoom-camera overlooking the range? Are camera-equipped drones being employed? Drones using real-time rotational radar GPS?
Will rabbits and other animals within the range become security risks (i.e. nuisances) and require permanent removal? What about tumbleweed? Blowing sand?
How soon until rotational radar becomes cost effective for golf-courses, cemeteries, office campuses and other large private areas?
Open space is getting smaller.
White House News Forgeries Widespread
Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television News
"To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years..."
~The liberal media is incorrigible.
March 13, 2005
We Beat Prisoners to Death Says U.S. Army
Army Details Scale of Abuse of Prisoners in an Afghan Jail
American military officials in Afghanistan initially said the deaths of Mr. Habibullah, in an isolation cell on Dec. 4, 2002, and Mr. Dilawar, in another such cell six days later, were from natural causes. Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, the American commander of allied forces in Afghanistan at the time, denied then that prisoners had been chained to the ceiling or that conditions at Bagram endangered the lives of prisoners.
But after an investigation by The New York Times, the Army acknowledged that the deaths were homicides. Last fall, Army investigators implicated 28 soldiers and reservists and recommended that they face criminal charges, including negligent homicide.
But so far only Private Brand, a military policeman from the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Cincinnati, and Sgt. James P. Boland, from the same unit, have been charged.
~These men that were beaten to death are 'detainees' or 'Afghan prisoners' never 'enemy prisoners'. You're better off as an enemy than a 'detainee'. The army is an organization in which labels and status are matters of life and death. (If the army had to take control of my town, because of some emergency, what would they label me? How would my family and me rank?)
[image via google/ not with story]
Pictures for the People:
Visual Multiples and their Role as Supporting Tools for the Democratic Process by Robert Benson
#25
"...pictures are two dimensional visual structures designed and made to alter the viewer. Their role and purpose is to leave the user in a different state than existed before the picture’s impact. The alteration might be one of increased knowledge, or it could be one of feeling, say of pleasure or unease. The key is that we see a picture and are inevitably made a different person as a result of this contact."
For hundreds of years the hand has manipulated tools to create pictures...When printing from moveable type was developed, the hand began to recede. The type became the tool, and the hand no longer shaped the letters, but instead only arranged them on the page.
As the hand receded from the making of letters- our most widespread symbolic pictures- it also was disappearing from the making of representational pictures. Photography was invented in the early nineteenth century, and within a hundred years after that more pictures had been generated by lens, light and chemistry that had been made in all of human history before.
Today we are witnessing the end stage of this process. In much of our daily lives the pictures we use derive from neither the hand nor even that upstart photography– instead they tend to look like...
link click on numbers to view the 100+pictures
Schwarzenegger Forged News Reports
Criticism initially focused on a video promoting labor regulations altering workers' meal breaks. But the administration later said it made videos on Schwarzenegger's efforts to reshape state government, stall rules that would increase nurse staffing at hospitals and alter teacher pay and tenure requirements, said aides to Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles.
The videos included suggested opening remarks for a news anchor, a narrative by a state employee and interviews with supporters of the administration policies. It's not evident to viewers who produced them and no opposition is expressed.
"In essence, those are all mock news stories," Romero said.
Administration officials said the videos were news releases and lawyers considered them legal. The administration said only portions of the videos were broadcast, but two stations identified by officials denied using the material.
~Imagine the uproar if a Democratic governor tried this? Liberal media! Liberal media!
March 12, 2005
In the Raw: "Home-Made" Porn and Reality Genres
In the postmodern world, many of the pictures we live with are sexualised images of youth and perfection. They have become part of the air we breathe. Like them or not, we cannot ignore them and we constantly respond to them in both conscious and unconscious ways. Sometimes we choose to emulate the images we see; at other times, we may reject them as ideals. Several decades of extremely intense pressure on ordinary people to emulate the increasingly fabricated images they see around them are beginning to produce a backlash. The taste for the ordinary can be seen as a reaction to the glut of glamour media images with which we are all constantly bombarded, and reality genres are, at least in part, bound up in this.
... the dominance of the mainstream industry has in any case now produced its own saturation effect, which has helped give rise to the current twin system, in which commercially produced porn vies with the increasing popularity of "real" porn made both by amateurs and professionals.
"Reality" has become a "style," able to be borrowed in advertising, music clips and mainstream movies. This style brings with it a powerful trio of viewer associations and expectations - the expectation of truth, the sense of intimacy, and the mobilisation of voyeurism. This powerful cluster is... fundamental to all uses of video footage on TV..."I [i.e. we] take voyeuristic pleasure in seeing other people's 'real' beatings, crimes, medical traumas, emotional confessions, exposures and so on ". This interpretation has the merit of locating reality porn within the larger context of other forms of screened reality and of confessional genres more generally. This helps focus attention on the conjunction of authenticity, privacy and voyeurism as key elements in an understanding of the phenomenon, as well as locating it within the domain of identity work.
article by Ruth Barcan 2002; journal of mundane behavior
~This article opened my eyes. I had no idea I was a glamour hound. I should apologize for being a snob.
[image via google]
NASA Installing 'Weather' Sensors on Commuter Airlines
A team led by researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., designed, built and equipped dozens of Mesaba Airlines aircraft with the Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Report (TAMDAR) instrument. The TAMDAR sensor allows aircraft flying below 25,000 feet to automatically sense and report atmospheric conditions. Observations are sent by satellite to a ground data center. The center processes and distributes up-to-date weather information to forecasters, pilots and those who brief pilots.
There are only 90 weather balloon sites nationwide used to collect temperature, wind and moisture data from twice-daily atmospheric soundings. The Great Lakes Fleet Experiment will add 1300 more daily atmospheric soundings.
The NASA Aviation Safety and Security Program is part of NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. It is also in partnership with the FAA, aircraft manufacturers, airlines and the Department of Homeland Security
press release see also NASA's Aviation Safety Program
~Radiation sensors certainly?
How about sensors that sniff-out airborne pollutants, anthrax and other bio-hazards, meth-labs?
March 11, 2005
Overheard at Starbucks
"In the late 1960's early '70's militant swingers helped police red-squads put an end to the left, yippies-hippies and free love.
Pot's always been illegal and communists were that generations terrorists. The two together provoked the backlash we're still liiving under."
--"Swingers were America's Red Guard? It's Red Brigades?"
"So many kind-hearted pot-smokers were turned into police informants."
-"You can't have an exclusive sex-club, if everyone's a member."
"Funny you should mention it, but gays WERE doing more or less the same."
-"Not exactly blow-jobs against the empire."
--"Wilhelm Reich must've been spinning in his grave."
The Cruise Ship Industry & the CDC
The cruise ship industry wants the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to use the words "increased incidences" instead of "outbreak" when describing illnesses on board their ships. Cruise lines are required to report any instance where at least 3% of their passengers fall ill during a cruise. These illnesses are usually caused by noroviruses, which cause diarrhea and vomiting, and ships work hard to prevent the spread of these viruses.
"How do you objectively communicate and not use alarmist words, while still ensuring the health and safety of passengers on cruise ships?" (International Council of Cruise Lines President Michael) Crye asked rhetorically.
Memento Mori: Iwo Jima
This photo of a Japanese soldier and a youngster who was probably his son will be returned to Iwo Jima by U.S. veterans.....
This week the photo is being returned to the Pacific...in a ceremony of remembrance..on Iwo Jima, an event held as part of the monthlong 60th anniversary of a battle in which 6,000 Americans and 20,000 Japanese were killed.
Almost no Japanese soldiers walked away from Iwo Jima... Many families never learned where or how their sons and husbands died. Connor and Zingaro will pass along a packet of artifacts from several battles, artifacts sent to them by American servicemen who did what was routine during the war: They searched Japanese bodies for flags, letters or photographs to bring to the United States as "souvenirs."
"We're not doing this for the Japanese we fought against," said Connor, a national leader in a movement to return those artifacts. "We're doing it for their wives and children. Can you imagine what it would mean if we could get some of this back to their families?"
~Mr. Connor's 60-year-old 'never say die' attitude towards the defeated Japanese soldiers is noteworthy. ('Falefel' is gonna be a dirty word in America for years?)
No mention in the article that the the Japanese were left on the island without ships in which to escape, only the comforting justification for the slaughter that their 'survival in defeat was seen as dishonor'.
In future rememberance ceremonies will Viet Nam veterans be returning noses, ears, fingers and penises they took as routine souvenirs?
~I'm wondering if the iconic power of Iwo Jima is typically American: that is, the actual value of a person, place, thing (or event) is inversely proportional to its reputation? I'm guessing about the strategic unimportance of Iwo Jima in hastening the defeat of Japan, (the Americans could've starved them out?) however the inverse ratio of value to fame in America has a ring of truth?
"February 19, 1945 about 30,000 United States Marines of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions, under V Amphibious Corps[?], landed on Iwo Jima and a battle for the island commenced. The landing was called Operation Detachment.
The battle ended on March 16, 1945 but small pockets of Japanese resistance persisted.
In the opening days of 1945, Japan faced the prospect of invasion by the Allied Forces. Daily bomber raids from the Marianas hit the mainland in an operation called Scavenger.
The Allies, led by the United States of America, wanted Iwo Jima not only to neutralize threats to its bombers and shipping, but to use its airfields for fighter escort and emergency bomber landings."
~What a price to pay for emergency bomber landings. I'm assuming fighter escorts were being launched from aircraft carriers. You think the Navy's fear of kamikaze attacks sealed the fate of thousands while someone in the War Office grossly undestimated the American casualties?
Demand for Public Information Is Surging
Hits on government Web sites are soaring. Document requests under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, have hit all-time highs. And online archives collecting everything from court decisions to spies' names are seeing vast growth in numbers of visitors.
All those developments, say advocates of greater governmental openness, show that their cause deserves more support.
"It's a huge irony that while the public is filing more FOIA requests, this administration is developing a reputation as one of the most secretive governments we've had in history," said Rick Blum, coordinator of the Web-based coalition OpenTheGovernment.org..
story via: secrecy news
~Good introduction to and overview of a blogging inspired phenomena.
NY Times Banned Ad
"...the lips will appear on ads in the L.A. Times, but not in The New York Times, the paper that once championed DEEP THROAT's crusade."
view banned image / movie review
"Inside Deep Throat" Directors Journal via: WOW Productions
~"Let's NOT talk about sex, baby." So many ideas and images are verboten these days in the moneyed-media.
photo via google/ not from above
Secret FBI Files Questions Al Qaeda Capabilities
No 'true' al Qaeda sleeper agents have been found in U.S.
story
~Goes without saying; al Qaeda hasn't attacked inside the USA for over four years. No terrorist sleeper cell would be inactive for that length of time? (I haven't a clue.)
Be less afraid, be very less afraid.
Everything has changed in America since 9/11 but not for Al Qaeda. (Please remove your shoes.)
(photo via google: Reuters
American Taliban John Walker Lindh suffers the consequences of allying with al-Qaeda)
March 10, 2005
Ex-Marine Says Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction
"I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.
"We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed," he said.
He said Saddam himself fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor. Then they shouted at him in Arabic: "You have to surrender. ... There is no point in resisting."
"Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam's capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well," Abou Rabeh said
item thanks Joerg