April 30, 2005
'Best' Bondage Videos
..from 2003 a list of mainstream (available through Amazon) BDSM videos and dvds
~for example
link w/links to more explicit vendors
~It cheers me to see in the movies that BDSM is for those involved more often than not a liberating experience. There's no such thing as BDSM date-rape.
You can't make and distribute a movie (through Amazon or any retailer) about the sadistic or masochistic joys of rape without inviting criminal prosecution. I imagine the reality of most BDSM experiences are not anything like what's portrayed in these films.
Then again "You've Got Mail" is not typical of how people hook-up via the internet, neither is "Pretty Woman" a documentary about prostitution.
These movies might be useful as 'marital aids' not for individuals wondering what to expect from the BDSM scene?
Cabinet Magazine's National Library
...outside Deming, New Mexico
Building the Cabinet National Library (article w/photos)
~I like libraries and I like earthworks. This is both.
Cartoons of Mr. Fish
for example...
@
link to a selection of the Cartoons of Mr. Fish
FBI Protects Osama Bin Laden's Right to Privacy
“It is dumbfounding that the United States government has placed a higher priority on the supposed privacy rights of Osama bin Laden than the public’s right to know what happened in the days following the September 11 terrorist attacks,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is difficult for me to imagine a greater insult to the American people, especially those whose loved ones were murdered by bin Laden on that day.”
The redacted documents were obtained by Judicial Watch under the provisions of the FOIA and through ongoing litigation (Judicial Watch v. Department of Homeland Security & Federal Bureau of Investigation...
press release/ more info w/link
Hitler Youth & the Vatican
article by Marc Ash
~Reflections on the new leader of the world's one billion Catholics.
FBI Releases Files on Bush to Blogger
~Here's the most interesting bit: (Harry Shearer calls this 'burying the lead')
Petrelis' claim that no other media organization has requested Bush's files was substantiated by the FBI FOIA office in October 2004, when RAW STORY first ran a piece on Petrelis' effort. Debbie Beatty, who works in the Historical and Executive Review Unit at the FBI and spoke for the FOIA office, stated that to her knowledge, no other media organization has requested Bush’s file.
“How it could it be that during the most important election of the past half century, the supposed liberal media could devote resources, ink and airtime to the FBI files of only one of the two major contenders for the White House, and totally ignore what the agency may have on the other candidate?” he penned.
“To their shame, no mainstream news outlet, liberal or conservative, bothered to investigate what the FBI has in its archives on Bush or efforts to obtain his file,” he added.
story w/links
~Considering how Kerry's anti-war FBI-archived past was mulched and composted during the campaign, a comparison between Bush and Kerry's FBI files was a made-to-order lead. The story would've 'wrote itself'. Could've ran installments.
It's not so much that the FBI is hiding any scandalous revelations about Bush's past in their files, that they would make public, ("The food was terrible and such small portions.") it's incredible that a blogger was the first to ask.
Maybe journalists lose credibility, lose sources, get tossed-off Christmas card lists if they FOIA (sic) the FBI? Maybe requesting FBI files is the surest way to get the FBI to re-open their (non-existent individual) files on you? Maybe journalists know that FOIA requests are a waste of (their) time; the FBI black outs (redacts) the 'naughty bits' in the FOI files of certain people and certain key organizations never appear at all?
April 29, 2005
Nukes in the News
Many Deaths Still Expected With Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons
WASHINGTON -- A nuclear weapon that is exploded underground can destroy a deeply buried bunker efficiently and requires significantly less power to do so than a nuclear weapon detonated on the surface would, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. However, such "earth-penetrating" nuclear weapons cannot go deep enough to avoid massive casualties at ground level, and they could still kill up to a million people or more if used in heavily populated areas, said the committee that wrote the report.
"Using an earth-penetrating weapon to destroy a target 250 meters deep -- the typical depth for most underground facilities -- potentially could kill a devastatingly large number of people," said John F. Ahearne, committee chair and director of the ethics program at the Sigma Xi Center of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, Research Triangle Park. NJ.
~They're not the kinder, gentler ('surgically precise') thermonuclear devises they're being promoted as. Somebody in the Bush Administration's fibbing? Making-up stories with happy endings so we all can feel warm and fuzzy about "bustin-bunkers"?
~Note: no red stuff on the surface here.
[image google/ not from above]
9/11 Hijackers Booked Tickets at Library
THE Bush administration revealed today that some of the September 11, 2001, hijackers booked their tickets on the internet using a computer in a college library in New Jersey.
The disclosure by Ken Wainstein, US attorney for the District of Columbia in testimony to the House of Representatives subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security, was intended to bolster the government's argument that Congress should renew a law allowing it to seize library and bookstore records.
~Shouldn't that library, not named in the above story, be destroyed? Bombed? Invaded and occupied? It was harboring terrorists. It's computers were responsible for aiding the most horrendous acts of terrorism ever against American citizens on American soil. How can they allow that building, those computers to continue to exist?
What if the FBI learned that 9/11 terrorists used a neighbor's home computer to book tickets instead? Imagine what those neighbors would have gone through?
Australian Challenges Gay Sex Conviction
AN Australian tourist jailed in Fiji on gay sex charges will seek to have his conviction quashed tomorrow on fresh grounds.
Victorian Thomas McCosker and a Fiji man were given two-year jail sentences...a verdict denounced by human rights groups.
Both are free on appeal.
McCosker and Dhirendra Nadan were jailed on charges of committing an unnatural act and indecent practice between males, which carry a prison sentence of up to 14 years under Fiji law.
The Australian Government has protested to Fiji over police not giving him consular access immediately after his arrest.
Fiji's Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and other leaders in the conservative Christian nation have defended the country's laws, saying homosexuality is a sin according to the Bible.
~Related post/link Sodomy Laws Around the World
US Billed for Iraqi Girls' Treatment
BELGIAN doctors sent an Iraqi girl home today after treating her for leg wounds caused by a bomb during the US invasion - and sent the 51,570 euro ($86,000) bill to the US embassy
Doctors brought (Hiba) Kassim to Belgium last year to try to save her left ankle, seriously damaged by a cluster bomb that also killed her brother in Baghdad in 2003.
After five operations and weeks of physiotherapy, Kassim is able to walk again, but with a slight limp.
Mr De Belder said he sent the bill to the US embassy because international law dictated that an occupying force was responsible for the well-being of the country's people.
~Yes! (Oh Munificient Freedom-Loving Liberators, put-up, fix-it-up, make-it-all-better or get-the-fuck-out.)
Hiba Kassim [image via google]
Guantanamo Interrogations 'Faked'
AUTHORITIES at Guantanamo Bay staged interrogations of detainees for visiting politicians and generals to give the impression that valuable intelligence was regularly being gathered, says a former US Army translator at the camp.
Sergeant Erik Saar told CBS television's 60 Minutes that he believed "only a few dozen" of the 600 detainees at the camp were terrorists and that little information was obtained from them.
Sgt Saar writes about his time at the camp in the book Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo, to be published next week by Penguin.
~I must remember: Life for people in power is never (like) a movie. That way of perceiving the world is for the inexperienced media-dependent young or the spiritually or mentally disenfranchised. Life for those at the top is more like theater, a play. Where everyone knows what role they're playing and what words to say. No jumpcuts, few surprises.
Double Visions
The idea behind Double Visions is that sometimes seeing two artworks side-by-side helps us notice things we might miss if we only looked at one painting. We've matched up pairs of artworks that we think create sparks when you look at them together. Some of the works are very similar and some are very different. Look at the sets with an eye toward comparing and contrasting.
Instructions
The main idea is to look closely at the matched images. Use the questions and especially your own eyes and ideas to see things you might have missed if the pictures weren't paired together.
#7
Questions to Get You Started
What's the subject of each of the two artworks?
What does each of the artists seem most interested in?
What feelings do you get from each artwork?
What do you think value communicates in these works?
Which artwork do you think is more of a "masterpiece?"
We Come in Peace
"The following letters were written by employees of Playtime, an adult toy store in Edison, New Jersey, to accompany thirty-six vibrators sent as gifts to Iraqi women last October. The project was funded by Playtime's owner, staff, and customers, and undertaken "for humanitarian reasons."
[image via Japanese on-line adult catalog/ not from above]
"Extinct" Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Sighted
"This is huge. Just huge," said Frank Gill, senior ornithologist at the Audubon Society. "It is kind of like finding Elvis."
It is just a hop, skip and a jump, as a woodpecker flies, from the last reliable sighting of the bird in Louisiana in 1944.
The large black-and-white birds have distinctive white wing patches and measure at least 20 inches (50 cm) in height. Males have a red crest.
"This is the most spectacular creature we could ever imagine rediscovering," John Fitzpatrick of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology in New York told a news conference.
"For three generations this bird has been a symbol of the great old forests of the southern United States," he added.
"It is a flagship of the blunders of excess of overharvesting. Nothing could be more hoped for than this Holy Grail."
As the name suggests, the birds have ivory-colored bills that help distinguish them from the similar but much more common pileated woodpecker.
They specialize in digging the bark off tall hardwoods that have died, and a breeding pair needs a large territory.
They specialize in digging the bark off tall hardwoods that have died, and a breeding pair needs a large territory.
The survival of ivory bills is closely tied to that of the deep, swampy forests it lived in. The Big Woods area where the sightings occurred was heavily logged in the 19th and early 20th century but many of its tall hardwoods have grown back since then.
Gene Sparling, the amateur naturalist who made the sighting that got the experts convinced the birds had survived, was canoeing in a remote, bug- and snake-infested area. "It was a spiritual experience," he said.
He posted his sighting on the Internet and caught the interest of Tim Gallagher, of Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology and his friend Bobby Harrison, a college professor and keen bird-watcher .
Sparling took them to where he saw the bird and one almost immediately flew toward them. "We almost fell out of the canoe," Gallagher said.
By April one had been videotaped. The report of the sighting is published in the journal Science.
~Ha-ha. ha-ha-ha.
@View image
~I read somewhere Walter Lantz based "Woody Woodpecker" on the Ivory-Billed. Woody Woodpecker Lives! However this site suggests Woody had a more romantic, less tragic, beginning.
CNN Distributes Bush's Fake News
More than 800 American stations pay a division of CNN -- which is called CNN Newsource -- to send them stories from CNN and its affiliates. But that's not all CNN Newsource does. Many public relations firms also pay it to distribute "video news releases" from their clients -- including the U.S. government.
story via unknown news
April 28, 2005
Photo-caption Non Sequitur
It isn't enough to live like kings, surrounded by a wealth of cheap consumer goods and services, we must be blessed. Our thoughts and actions shine with the reflected glory of God or what's a creation for?
Human Rights Watch Calls Abu Ghraib "Tip-of-the-Iceberg"
The abuses at Abu Ghraib are part of a larger pattern of U.S. rights violations of detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, New York-based Human Rights Watch said.
The group said it was concerned the United States had not stopped the use of what it called illegal coercive interrogation.
It said nine detainees were known to have died in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. At least 11 al Qaeda suspects have also "disappeared" in U.S. custody, with no evidence of where they are being held.
The CIA has also transferred up to 150 prisoners to countries in the Middle East known to practice torture routinely, the group added.
(~If anyone's wondering how many people the CIA may have kidnapped and 'disappeared' during the Bush Administration.)
The former U.S. commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, was cleared of wrongdoing by an army panel last week. The head of the military police unit at Abu Ghraib received a letter of reprimand and was relieved of her command.
~More "hostile information": we should thank Jesus this information isn't "illegal" as well?
abu ghraib detainees in poses that helped their guards 'blow-off-steam'
~Is it too soon to begin collecting funds for "Operation Iraqi Freedom" War Memorials?
Do you think there's room on the Washington Mall for a statue dedicated to "The Unknown Detainee(s)?
Hostile Information
Partially eaten by dogs
more fallujah photos
"The Pentagon has a phrase for the photos and reports Dahr Jamail was able to bring back to us from his time in Iraq. They call it 'Hostile Information,' otherwise known as unassailable facts that cut violently against the pretty portrait and non-news the American people have been spoon-fed about our occupation of that country."
~I'm pleased the Pentagon employs people to identify "hostile information", hostile images. (Can images be hostile? Art antagonistic? Signs unfriendly?)
I'm hoping there's truth to the hundredth 'insane' monkey theory. Who knows which wacky procedure or policy will finally expose to all the Pentagon as the chthonic-robotic death-dealing necrophiliacs they are?
The FRUiTS of Japanese Fashion:
Reading Resistance on the Streets of Harajuku
by Christy Tidwell
gallery also here inurl:tidwell japanese
-Related Momus' What Is Cute?
'Draw a circle, and ray out from it the abject , the melancholic , the wicked , the childlike. Now in the zones between add the erotic , the ironic , the narcotic , and the kitsch . Intersperse the Romantic/Victorian , the Disney/ consumerist , and the biologically deterministic . At the center of this many-spoked wheel lies a connective empty space. Label it CUTE.'
above via growing up sexually
"Lolita Misrepresented; Lolita Reclaimed: Disclosing The Doubles”
"Why didn't the Lolita myth evolve in a way that more accurately reflects Nabokov's Lolita? Why isn't the definition of "Lolita" "a molested adolescent girl" instead of a "seductive" one? The answer seems relatively clear, but its consequences are complex.
...throughout the years Lolita has become the product of our culture beyond the book's pages, where she has been made a murderess by characters far more powerful than Humbert. And these mythical machineries of evil Lolita narratives perpetuate a misogyny that imposes developmentally abnormal sexuality on some females and simultaneously punishes all females for any sexuality.
article by Elizabeth Patnoe
[image not with above link]
Fun in the Great Outdoors
~Thank you for giving me the time and the inclination to find images like this and the financial means to share them. They might not be art or all that interesting, but I'm still looking. Ya'll know who you are.
April 27, 2005
The Genius Forum
~I can't find any archived posts on the subjects of evil, cruelty, wickedness or stupidity. (Or sex!) What a fantastic place.
[Fermi's UofC lab/ not from above]
Scars
~for example...
"One thing about scars, I kinda see them as a borderline, like a limiting space between two different worlds. It's strange how they change and they never quite heal.".-- Leslie Bentley
Facial Corsetry
"Facial corsetry and bioactive glass facial implants :combining facial reconfiguration devices & pioneering reconstructive surgical materials and techniques"
by Artist-in-Residence at Guy’s Hospital, London, Paddy Hartley,
Body Modification Conference web-site / 2003 press release
April 26, 2005
The Virgin Mary as Goddess
Maya and Buddha; Isis and Horus; Mary and Jesus; Devaki and Krishna
"The connections between the Virgin Mary of Christianity
and goddesses of the ancient world are many and fascinating."
This site explores some of the phenomena.
Playtime Recipes for Poisons
Postscript to UK Poison Cell Trial
story via secrecy news April 19
read more about UKs 'Poison Cell' or about ricin as a weapon
here at National Security Notes or from FAS' search results for ricin.
Management Lessons Learned from Online Sex FAQs
article w links by chip rowe
['wicker man' via google/ not with article]
Chicago's Salt-Stain Madonna
Traffic stopped in a Chicago's Kennedy Expressway (at Diversey Ave.) underpass after a stain, which many say looks like the Virgin Mary, appeared on a wall.
~Blurring further the imaginary line that separates the accidental from the miraculous.
photo /caption via BBC News
link to BBCs slide-show of other Apparitions of the Virgin from around the world
via news of the weird pro-edition
~I'm in awe of how little inspiration the faithful everywhere(?) require for their devotions. Artists and photographers are working waay too hard, if these images are examples of what people will go out of their way (in Chicago literally 'stop-traffic') to see.
Overheard at Starbucks
"So your neighbor, the matron-in-training, the good daughter who cares for her ailing widowed-mother, shoots these 'popper-thingies' at whoever steps out of that other house?"
"And as payment she receives coupons and gift certificates redeemable at better stores and restaurants? Circuit City? Neimann Marcus? Benihana's? Starbucks?"
"Who supplies the poppers? For what purpose?
Why don't those neighbors complain?
Why not simply arrest those people if they're criminals? Why aren't the police involved?
-"Who said they weren't?"
"How could they know the 'good daughter' doesn't sentimentally flush the stuff down the toilet instead?
-"What and give up the chance to advance to the free day-spa, plane-tickets, car-rental reward circle?
Anyway...they know."
April 25, 2005
From the Radio
Harry Shearer's LeShow observed that all the live coverage, all the video, all those inspirational images from the Vatican (without the talking heads) was supplied to the world's tv networks gratis, for free via Vatican TV. Stranger still the networks weren't required to acknowledge the Vatican's generosity in any form. No logos citing that the video came from Vatican TV needed to be broadcast.
Nightline April 7, 2005 in a general way noted "...the vatican, working with italian state television, put together one of the most professional TV outfits there is. And it's their picture that the 3,500 journalists parked outside St. Peter's square, will be relaying to the rest of the world, which gives the vatican, unparallelled control over what the world sees."
~One might wonder in what ways the world's tv networks will repay the Vatican for their gift?
[KRON image & Nightline caption via google video search]
Insight Meditation Online
~"Insight" as in what you're seeking is "in sight"? Or "insight" as "inner sight'? (Or you could hear "insight" as "inside"?)
[image google/ not from above]
AGPix.com
image catalog/ photographers with images online
~Hundreds of photographers; thousands of travel, nature and stock photographs "legally protected by U.S. & International copyright laws and may NOT be used for reproduction in any manner without the explicit authorization of the respective copyright holders."
for example...
You must purchase the images to see them in the sizes in which they are intended to be viewed.
There's a cartoonish or emblematic quality in these smaller, less detailed versions. While destroying the artfulness, the uniqueness of the valued versions, they tell us something about the class, the genre of photographs being sold and the photographer's technical expertise.
After randomly browsing the images of a half-dozen of the above photographers I see that I've haven't (yet) produced one photo equaling the overall level of quality exhibited here.. The difference between amateur and professional sports comes to mind.
April 24, 2005
The Silencing of Sibel Edmonds
The unsettling story of whistleblower Sibel Edmonds took another twist on Thursday, as the government continued its seemingly endless machinations to shut her up. The U.S. Court of Appeals here denied pleas to open the former FBI translator's First Amendment case to the public, a day after taking the extraordinary step of ordering a secret hearing.
Edmonds was hired after 9-11 to help the woefully staffed FBI's translation department with documents and wiretaps in such languages as Farsi and Turkish. She soon cried foul, saying the agency's was far from acceptable and perhaps even dangerous to national security. She was fired in 2002.
Oral arguments in her suit against the federal government were scheduled for this morning, but yesterday the clerk of the appeals court unexpectedly and suddenly announced the hearing would be closed. Only attorneys and Edmonds were allowed in.
Only after she was fired did Edmonds go to the Congress. She is saying she played by the rules and was squashed by the government without cause or explanation. And when she went outside the official channel to reveal what was going on within the bureau, the government responded by classifying her previous attempts to speak out, including press accounts written before the classification came down. One of them was a 60 Minutes segment.
~She could be lying, doing pre-publicity for a book deal or just wrong about the extent of the problems in the FBI's translation department but classifying previous press accounts is an odd way to discredit her.
whistleblowing hero or conspiracy buffs' pin-up?
(Will she be on "The View", Letterman or Hollywood Tonight anytime soon?)
CIA Reviews Castro's Speeches 2005
The CIA's Foreign Intelligence Broadcast Service (FBIS) faithfully
monitors the marathon public speeches of Cuba's Fidel Castro -- so
that you don't have to.
"President Castro, who is right-handed and known for gesticulating
extensively with his right arm while speaking, has been
progressively favoring his left arm since February," FBIS observed
acutely in a new account.
link via April 22, 2005 secrecy news
~The grand-children of cold-war warriors are hard at work keeping this Commie puppet in their sights. Imagine the parties they'll have in Vegas when Castro dies.
Reading Class:
an Online Game/Blog that Explores Class in America
"Class became foregrounded in my experience as I crossed class boundaries (becoming the first in my family to attend college, etc.) and I noticed that class is mainly an economic condition, but not bounded by that aspect alone. Sexual orientation, race, ideology, region, and taste culture also cut across class strata and skew easy class reading. Taste culture is a matrix of aesthetics, lifestyle choices, mannerisms, and cultural values that reinforce the economic foundations of class. Class represents a kind of cultural diversity that is seldom celebrated or seriously discussed, especially in America, but it is nonetheless important to understand. Taste culture is a powerful yet unidentified force in our daily lives.
ReadingClass is what Joseph Beuys called "social sculpture"- engagement with the intangible elements that shape our lives. ReadingClass uses social software to explore the social question of class. Specifically, ReadingClass is a multimedia game built inside an Internet blog...
[image/google not with above]
April 23, 2005
Overheard at Starbucks
"If there's a 'criminal underclass' does it follow there would need to be a non-criminal overclass?"
-"You mean like law and order royalty? Public-safety royalty?"
"Untouchables."
"Was J. Edgar Hoover royalty?"
-"Hoover was gay."
"Hoover was the exception that proved the rule. The courts' eunuch."
-"Eunuch? How many years did he control the FBI?"
-"Do you think there's Hoover-inspired law and order officials in America's Bible-belt today?"
"Like Roy Cohn?"
-"I wonder if people dress-up as J. Edgar in gay-pride parades?"
He's got federal buildings named after him."
HumanDescent
galleries many photo-shop-type images of animal/human animal/animal hybrids
for example...
Natural History & Images
links via tree of life project
for example...
ant @
The Election of Benedict XVI...
...as Pope Causes Hurt and Pain among LGBT People
Upon hearing the news, in his initial response, ILGA Co-secretary general Kursad Kahramanolgu said “It appears as if hatemongering is now the quickest route to promotion in the Vatican.”
Throughout his tenure in the church, and especially during his time as head of the Vatican’s “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” Cardinal Ratzinger had been the voice of homophobia during the reign of John Paul II.
His writings and statements go so far as to describe homosexuality as an “intrinsic moral evil” that should be treated rather than accepted.
In a 1986 letter to Catholic Bishops on “Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” Cardinal Ratzinger ordered that church counselling to homosexuals include psychological, sociological, and medical sciences to “cure” gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
more ILGA press release via growing up sexually (topica list)
~Miracles happen everyday!
Soon the only gays in the Catholic Church will be the priests?
[image 'homo2' via @/ not from above links]
April 22, 2005
Fast Capitalism
"journal devoted to analyzing the impact of information and communication technologies on self, society and culture in the 21st century. bridges the social sciences and the humanities. welcomes disciplinary and interdisciplinary work."
link to -issue 1.1- etc. thanks diederik
[logo: @/ not from above]
~By the way isn't the WTO logo a stylized verrsion of this I Ching hexagram?
Wickedness.net
The Wickedness.Net project seeks to explore all issues relating to evil and human wickedness.
link to info, projects, discussion group, (free) e-journal, publishing, and resources
~I can envision similar inter-and multi-disciplinary projects like Wickedness.net bringing together perspectives from across the spectrum of academic fields, professions, vocations, religious traditions and other relevant sources helping to generate provocative insights into human cruelty, stupidity, and self-absorption as well.
April 21, 2005
Former Girl Friends
link to photos of undressed young women in the throes of love, alcohol...whatever.
[image/ google not from above]
Sexy Junkies
link to a few photos of undressed young women with needles, sores, blood and bruises. via aberrant news
April 12, 2005 Baqubah, Iraq
A U.S. soldier assigned to Bravo Company, 130th Infantry Battalion, attached to 3rd Brigade Combat Team, provides security while other members of Bravo Company search for weapons and possible insurgents near Baqubah, Iraq, April 12, 2005.
U.S. soldiers assigned to Bravo Company, 130th Infantry Battalion, attached to 3rd Brigade Combat Team, patrol the streets of Baqubah, Iraq, and provide security while other members of Bravo Company search for weapons and possible insurgents...
A U.S. soldier assigned to Bravo Company, 130th Infantry Battalion, attached to 3rd Brigade Combat Team, searches a home for weapons and possible insurgents during a raid in Baqubah, Iraq...
defend america's photo essay
~Related article: What I Didn't See In Iraq by Congressman Jim McGovern
~Obladi Oblada life goes on brahhh...Lala how the life goes on. @
abu ghraib prison, iraq (google photo)
hammond indiana golf course (under construction) cieciel photo
SearchEngine Z
search (or browse!) by file types! PDFs / Mp3s and images (who knew?)
April 20, 2005
Faith
yahoo
~The Pope was elected by the men here in red hats. Faith must be a powerful force if a billion Catholics believe their church, without whose intervention eternal salvation is impossible, can be best served by the decisions of this exclusive gathering.
How can I and my wife and kids live authentic spiritual lives if God, being old and never married himself, gives special favors (his home phone number? the power to choose the pope) to old men who publically profess a life of celibacy? Life without women and children? It don't seem right.
The Red Scare 1918-1921
Close the Gate. Literary Digest, 7/5/19.
Originally from the Chicago Tribune (Orr).
political cartoon
from Red Scare; An Image Database
~Only the times have changed; preying on fear of the other for political gain will always be with us.
SWAT Monkey
MESA, Ariz. The Mesa Police Department is looking to add some primal instinct to its SWAT team. And to do that, it's looking to a monkey.
The department has submitted a request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, which is considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee.
The department is seeking about 100-thousnd dollars in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.
The monkey weighs only three to eight pounds, has tiny humanlike hands and puzzle-solving skills. Police say it would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go and could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command.
via aberrant news
~Can monkeys be trained to shoot?
photo via Killer Pet Dude (w/other cool animal pics) / not above]
Justice Dept.: Any Destructive Device May Be a WMD
Almost any explosive device or weapon may be considered a "weapon of,mass destruction" according to the Department of Justice.
The Department announced on Tuesday that three British nationals had been indicted in New York for conspiring to use weapons of mass
destruction, among other charges.
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2005/April/05_crm_180.htm
At a press briefing on the indictment, an alert reporter asked Deputy
Attorney General James B. Comey exactly which "weapons of mass
destruction" the individuals had conspired to use.
"Is there any implication in the use of that term that there was a
biological or a chemical or a radiological element to the plan?" the
reporter inquired.
"We have not alleged that," Mr. Comey replied.
But, he added, "a weapon of mass destruction in our world goes beyond that and includes improvised explosive devices."
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/04/doj041205.html
This is an unconventional use of the term "weapon of mass
destruction" that further relaxes its already expansive definition,
which encompasses everything from thermonuclear explosives to
willful releases of toxic chemicals.
If improvised explosive devices also count as WMD, then not only did
Saddam Hussein possess abundant quantities of WMD, but two years
after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, so do the Iraqi insurgents who are
using them to kill American soldiers almost every day.
On closer inspection, however, Mr. Comey's all-encompassing usage
appears to have a basis in statute.
According to 18 U.S.C. 2332a, which is cited in the latest
indictment, a "weapon of mass destruction" includes "any destructive
device." That in turn is defined in 18 U.S.C. 921 to include almost
any type of weapon that is not "generally recognized as particularly
suitable for sporting purposes."
Secrecy News link (April 14, 2005)
~To settle future arguments or bar-bets: According to US Federal law IEDs are WMDs: an "improvised explosive device" can be a weapon of mass destruction. (links above)
So the kids from the nearby town who were put on probation for blowing up a half dozen or so of their neighbors free-standing mail-boxes with homemade pipe-bombs could have been charged with using WMDs and sent away to federal prison for a very long time. However they ARE white kids, not Middle Eastern or Black Muslim, who live in expensive homes.
I wonder if any of them are capable of appreciating how lucky they are?
[image via google/ not with above links]
Habemus Papam
It seems he's been elected quickly. Though bells still doesn't sound here in Spain we have the news to know it.
Streaming video of the chimney and the white Smoke via the Vatican TV.
Edit: It took them some minutes to make the bells jingle at the churches here, but the sound is impressing.
Edit2: The new Pope is Ratzinger (Benedict XVI). The sword of the dogma has killed the Spirit of evolution in the Church.
April 19, 2005
Sodomy Laws Around the World
~See the Survey of Key Developments as an introduction.
~I wonder if tourists to places where various acts of sodomy are illegal are arrested as often as residents? (Cottage-industries throughout the world built around the judicious enforcement or not of sodomy laws?)
Does the US State Dept. issue 'sodomy warnings' for American travelers? Are there American citizens imprisoned in these countries because of these laws?
Do all sodomy laws create, like America's "War on Drugs", a permanent criminal underclass and the necessity of a strong law and order presence to combat the inevitable "class warfare"?
Major League Baseball 2005 Fan Cost Index
...tracks the cost of attendance for a family of four. The FCI includes: two adult average price tickets; two child average price tickets; four small soft drinks; two small beers; four hot dogs; two programs; parking; and two adult-size caps.
link (links also to NBA/NFL/NHL/etc. 'fan cost indexes'.)
Somewhat related The Business of Baseball Website
~The two teams with the most delusional baseball fans, the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, charge the most? Go figure.
Does anyone else see the last century of America's militarism as a necessary antidote to the tedium of its 'national sport' baseball?
[image/google; not from above]
Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798 - 2004
This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past US military ventures abroad...
report by Richard F. Grimmett
~I never knew there were so many enemies of freedom and democracy throughout the world.
Photo-caption Non Sequitur
"He joins the military: he no longer wants to know what happens; he no longer wants to know what he does."
[photo/google; caption/ e. canetti]
April 18, 2005
Overheard at Starbucks
"What tells them they belong?
That this is their place, their town ..their time? "
-"Sunday I saw a large banner outside a busy church parking lot that read: 'God is stil speaking'. It looked like God told most of them to buy or lease SUVs."
--"It feels good to be part of the herd, to be one with the crowd. It's a gut thing; hard-wired like a new-born's sucking. In good times or bad you seek the comfort of others. Belief has nothing to do with it. "
---"What's telling you that you don't belong?"
-"Unless you believe that?"
Erotica May Date Back to Stone Age
German archaeologists have found what they believe is Europe's earliest known clay figure of a male, along with a female figure that they think once was attached to the male in a sexual position.
Together, the two finds could represent the earliest 3D depiction of a copulating human couple, according to the archaeological team.
Der "Adonis von Zschernitz" und 'friend'
link to Adonis' museum page/ link to Allein unter Frauen...
more small images; text in German
~Two internet articles about this discovery didn't use these illustrations. One featured a photo of a bull-figurine from pre-Columbian Mexico and the other a b&w photo of a Renaissance(?) painting of Adonis. Did German copyright restrictions prevent the publication of the above actual photos? Or are publishers fearful of offending "sensitive" readers with photos of naked clay fragments?
Erotica'? Is the journalist trying to change the meaning of erotica? I don't view Annie Sprinkle videos as part of a spring ritual before re-seeding the lawn, fertilizing the roses or putting the tomato plants in. Would photos of viagara capsules be considered erotica? ...If one was addicted to the use of viagara?
I just now noticed: viagara rhymes with Niagara, as in Niagara Falls. I hate marketing insights.
PhotoLit
PhotoLit is a freely accessable databank which aims to list photographic literature published since 1839 . It is not a list to order books from. At present (February 2004) PhotoLit lists ca. 27.500 entries (c. 45 MB) of books, periodicals and periodical articles which have – in a wider or more narrow sense – to do with photography in all its artistic, visual and technical aspects. The stock listed so far is only a small part of the world’s existent photographic literature – but titles are constantly added to. And we ask your assistance to make PhotoLit more complete.
As PhotoLit has been founded in Germany it yet reflects listings which are predominantly German or English language based. An internationalisation is definitely aimed for...
Bush Gives Slime-Mold Beetles a Bad Name
Bush Gets a Bug of His Own
"Two prominent entomologists were apparently serious about
something that, really, sounds straight out of MoveOn.org. Three
new species of slime-mold-eating beetles were named after G.W.
Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Researchers Quentin
Wheeler and Kelly B. Miller swore they did it out of admiration for
the leaders' advocacy of freedom and democracy."
press release via News of the Weird
Call for Papers: "Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets"
This collection will work from the premise that public toilets, far from being banal or simply functional, are highly charged spaces, shaped by notions of propriety, hygiene and the binary gender division. Indeed, public toilets are among the very few openly segregated spaces in contemporary Western culture, and the physical differences between 'gentlemen' and 'ladies' remains central to (and is further naturalized by) their design. As such, they provide a fertile ground for critical work interrogating how conventional assumptions about the body, sexuality, privacy, and technology can be formed in public space and inscribed through design.
We welcome papers which explore the cultural meanings, histories, and ideologies of the public toilet as a gendered space. Any subject is appropriate: toilet design and signage, toilet humour and euphemisms, personal narratives and legal cases, as well as art sited in public toilets. We invite submissions in the format of traditional academic papers of no more than 7000 words (including footnotes).
We also welcome the submissions of design and art projects that expose the gendered nature of the 'functional' toilet spaces and objects.
Completed articles and projects should be directed to the editor at gershenson@judnea.umass.edu. All submissions must be received via electronic file no later than January 15, 2006. We encourage prospective authors to contact the editors with questions about submissions.
link thanks diederik (growing up sexually)
~I've never thought about an art project involving toilet spaces or objects, gendered or otherwise. (Does video-taping another in the tub count?)
[image via google/ NOT from above links]
Bush Administration Covers Up Rise in Terrorism
Bush Administration Eliminating 19-year-old International Terrorism Report
Washington - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.
Several US officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.
~Is it still yellow journalism or liberal bias if stories like this are not headlined?
April 17, 2005
IBM Car Tech to Nab Speeders
IBM has won a $125 million deal that will put "black boxes" in tens of thousands of cars in the United Arab Emirates.
The four-year deal, expected to be announced on Friday (April 15, 2005) calls for IBM to equip cars and trucks with a telematics device and GPS (Global Positioning System) that will provide information on a vehicle's location and speed to government agencies. It will link tens of thousands of vehicles in a nationwide wireless network. IBM asserts this will be the largest application of telematics--or the marriage of mobile communications and computing--as of yet.
If a driver exceeds the speed limit, a warning will be transmitted to the individual car via an on-board speaker. Autos will also be equipped with screens and voice-recognition software to access services planned for the future, IBM said.
press release via/archived here at politech
Related: Cameras to Watch Roadwork Zones
April 1, 2005 Vans equipped with radar and cameras will patrol Chicago-area expressways and tollroads to snap the license plates of speeders. Violators won't be pulled over. They will receive a $375 ticket in the mail.
The fine for a second violation doubles to $1,000 and a 90-day driver's license suspension...story
April 16, 2005
Interview with James Luckett of Consumptive
from in transitu
more photos by james luckett links on the right
April 15, 2005
Nike Publishes Details of Abuse at Asian Factories
Nike, long the subject of sweatshop allegations, yesterday produced the most comprehensive picture yet of the 700 factories that produce its footwear and clothing, detailing admissions of abuses, including forced overtime and restricted access to water.
The company has published a 108-page report, available on its website..
http://www.nike.com/nikebiz/news/pressrelease.jhtml?year=2005&month=04&letter=a
The company said it needed further cooperation with other members of the industry.
"We do not believe Nike has the power to single-handedly solve the issues at stake," the company said in the report.
press release
/ see Oxfam's Nike Watch for future acts of corporate responsibility
~"You first have to admit you have a problem, before you can work on getting clean".
[screen-shot nike tv commericial/ cieciel]
IKONOS VIEWS SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY
On April 8, Space Imaging, Inc. released a satellite image of space shuttle Discovery on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in anticipation of the forthcoming shuttle launch sometime between May 15 and June 3. It will be the first shuttle mission since the Columbia accident in February 2003.
link to larger photo etc. via secrecy news
Labyrinths Photo Gallery
Old St Patricks Church, Chicago renovation.. Booth Hansen architects url
~Portable labyrinths? Wooden-finger labyrinth? (That's what she called it.)
UKs Terrorist "Poison Cell" Not Guilty
UK Terror Trial Finds No Terror
The trial of the infamous "UK poison cell," a group portrayed by Secretary of State Powell as al Qaida-associated operatives plotting to launch ricin attacks in the United Kingdom and in league with Muhamad al Zarqawi in Iraq, found nothing of the sort.
...in an astonishing example of sheer incompetence, another employee ...charged with passing on to British authorities the information that the preliminary finding of ricin was in error, turned around and did the opposite, informing that ricin had indeed been detected.
The alleged existence of ricin and "the UK poison cell" in January 2003 would subsequently play a part of Colin Powell's presentation as rationale for war against Iraq. In his speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003, Powell purported to show how a web of terrorists including the UK cell, was interconnected with Muhamad al Zarqawi, who was said to be directing terrorist plots from the safe refuge of Iraq.
There was a theory and allegedly intelligence on the UK cell and the Wood Green ricin within the US government.
On February 12, for example, CNN reported that Colin Powell had contended the British ricin had actually come from Iraq in a story entitled "Europe skeptical of Iraq-ricin link."
There was no ricin. And no other poisons were detected. No capability was exhibited to be in the hands of the defendants. Kamel Bourgas was convicted of a murder that was not an act of terrorism but a tragic consequence of the collision of a police raid and one bad man. All the rest were nobodies, now presumably to be free men after extended stays in an English high security prison for terrorists.
story via secrecy news
see also archived story & links here at Unknown News
~Also an example of state-of-the-art UK anti-terrorism investigation and prosecution?
Guantanamo Detainee Suing US for Video of His Torture
A detainee at a U.S. military prison alleges that U.S. military guards jumped on his head until he had a stroke that paralyzed his face, nearly drowned him in a toilet and later broke several of his fingers, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in federal court.
The detainee, Mustafa Ait Idr, 34, an Algerian citizen living in Bosnia, has been held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for three years on suspicion that he plotted to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia. The lawsuit, filed by his attorneys in federal court in Boston, alleges that the government has probably videotaped Idr's beatings and demands that it produce any such tapes and all records of alleged torture and interrogation tactics at the detention facility.
The lawyers asked for the material seven months ago under the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit asserts that the Defense and Justice departments are refusing to provide the material.
A Defense Department representative, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said the department does not comment on individual detainees' cases and could not comment on the lawsuit because it had not yet received it.
Idr described the alleged abuse to his attorneys when they visited him in Cuba recently. His account of the beatings is very similar to written military summaries of the incidents, according to the lawsuit.
The military videotaped the work of teams of prison guards responsible for quelling disturbances by detainees and created written summaries of the material on the tapes. More than two dozen detainees have alleged in declassified accounts given to their attorneys that the teams' real purpose was to force them to confess or cooperate with interrogators.
"The departments of Defense and Justice must explain how these abuses happened and take action," said Avi Cover, senior associate at Human Rights First, an advocacy group.
Idr was accused of plotting with five others to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo in November 2001. All were acquitted by a Bosnian court in January 2002, but U.S. agents arrested them as they left the courthouse and eventually took them to Guantanamo Bay.
via/archived truthout
April 14, 2005
Overheard at Starbucks
"Is there S&M date-rape?
In the North-east and on a few California college campuses there's probably reported cases of gay date-rape."
-"You're not using sexual orientation like race, class or nationality as a lens to look at society?
--"You and your sex-gangs."
-"What does what adults do with each others joy-sticks have to do with society's institutions?"
--"Only bigots and homophobes talk about sex acts that way."
Scientists Scramble to Destroy Flu Strain
London - Thousands of scientists were scrambling Tuesday (April 12, 2005) at the urging of global health authorities to destroy vials of a pandemic flu strain sent to labs in 18 countries as part of routine testing.
The rush, urged by the World Health Organization, was sparked by a slim, but real, risk that the samples, could spark a global flu epidemic. The vials of virus sent by a U.S. company went to nearly 5,000 labs, mostly in the United States, officials said.
"The risk is relatively low that a lab worker will get sick, but a large number of labs got it and if someone does get infected, the risk of severe illness is high and this virus has shown to be fully transmissible," WHO's influenza chief, Klaus Stohr, told The Associated Press.
It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people - was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs.
It was a decision that Stohr described as "unwise," and "unfortunate."
That particular bug was "an epidemic virus for many years," Stohr said from the U.N. health agency's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. "The risk is low but things can go wrong as long as these samples are out there and there are some still out there."
The 1957 strain has not been included in the flu vaccine since 1968, and anyone born after that date has no immunity to it.
Police Take Woman's Identity and Use it for Sting Operation
Strip-club sting was legal, Miami (Ohio) County official says
Sunday, April 10, 2005 Bill Bush THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Authorities gave Michelle Szuhay another woman’s identity to use while undercover.
Haley Dawson has never been a stripper.
But Ohio liquor-control agents took her identity and gave it to a
22-year-old college student who they had recruited to work undercover as a nude dancer.
...police paid University of Dayton criminal-justice student Michelle Szuhay $100 a night to take it all off in early 2003 — as liquor-control officers drank beer and watched in the audience for three months, court papers show.
Other officers watched her strip on the Internet, using an account
created under the identity of a dead man.
The officers did all this by using Dawson’s driver’s license and Social Security number to hide Szuhay’s identity while she worked at the targeted strip club, the now-closed Total Xposure in Troy.
To Dawson’s father, David Dawson, "It certainly looks like identity theft." But it’s not, said Miami County Prosecutor Gary Nasal.
Pointing to a 2002 change in Ohio’s law aimed at fighting identity
theft, Nasal said police are allowed to assume anyone’s identity as long as it’s part of an investigation.
via/archived politech / more information archived here at unknown news
~I wonder if the nude dancer/student/undercover operative was allowed to keep her salary and tips from the strip club?
image via google/NOT from above
April 13, 2005
The eyes speak better than words sometimes
USA Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld stares at the recently elected Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, during his unexpected visit to the country
Photo: Hadi Mizban. AP
TV Friend: Spy
View image View image View image View image View image
~For tv characters spying, surveillance and security are sexy, (along with most other teen and adult programming) In real life perhaps not so much?
April 12, 2005
Poem: "The New Colossus"
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
---by Emma Lazurus @
Questions Only Encourage Others
~Another one beyond the pale and at the very doors of the center of legislative power for the most technologically militarized nation in the history of the world.
What brings a man to this place? What could've happened in his life that made THIS the thing to do?
There are many different ways to leave your life behind, to get up- close-and-personal with the people and rituals of the world's security agencies. Its easier then its ever been, almost effortless for this guy, to relocate to Terrorville, Terroristia, Terrorslavia or Terroristan.
Inside the Bubble: Forced Evacuation
...police responding to the sight of the man standing by himself in front of the nation's capitol with two suitcases at his side.
A man, background, standing suspiciously in front of the U.S. Capitol Building with two black suitcases by his side, looks back at police preparing to rush and tackle him to the ground in Washington April 11, 2005
...as onlookers applauded, police tackled a man who'd silently stationed himself outside the U-S Capitol. The man had two suitcases with him, and his presence forced the evacuation of the nearby side of the Capitol.
~Note among the 25 photos in Yahoos slide-show for this story there's not one that shows the actual moment of contact between the Swat team and the silent man in black. There are photos of 'dragging' and others after the man's been 'subdued' but no pictures of the tackle, when the Swat team piled on. So routine newspaper images from sports like football and hockey are forbidden when its the police doing the 'checking' or the tackling? Because of lawsuits?
In today's America have Swat teams taken over the job of 'the men with the butterfly nets'?
Is perfomance art making a come-back?
We Don't Do That Here(?)
A model wears a dress from the collection of Arsenicum by ENTON during a late night show in Moscow, April 5, 2005. The show was part of the Russian Fashion Week which runs in Moscow till Saturday. REUTERS/Alexander Natruskin @
~The pupae look is IN this year.
Blood Saves Lives
Want to make the planet a better place?
BECOME A BLOOD DONOR
From rallying against polluters to lobbying for better health care to fighting injustices around the world, you try to do the right thing. It's not easy to save the world. But there's an easy way to make a positive impact and that's by donating blood.
link to blood saves tv ads and info.
~They don't mention how much hospitals might charge the people who receive your blood donation.
[image via google]
Lone Ranging Romance
"Helen Pritchard (UK) and Anne-Marte Eidseth Rygh (Norway) have set out on a stubborn three-year journey called 'Lone Ranging Romance,' during which they will travel by Volvo through their homelands, with an iconic 20-kilo moose head, conducting interviews around the subject of nostalgia with the 'heroes' they meet along their way. These found respondents will be subsequently mythologized into the epic voyage, and the interviews will be posted to GilbertandGrape's blog every second Thursday of the month. ' Lone Ranging Romance' will conclude when the aforementioned moose head, 'The Lone Ranger,' reaches Nordkapp, Norway, 'where the midnight sun never sets.' This will occur in 2008, timed with the UK and Norway each hosting European Capitals of Culture..."
link to live reportage via net art news
~Who hasn't thought of a road-trip art project? There must be thousands of vacation/road-trip/travel blogs. Perhaps none as conceptually grounded as this one. Who hasn't thought of 'playing reporter'?
I like that Gilbert and Grape are so at ease with culture (and in European Capitals!). For me culture is something that requires an admission charge. For Gilbert and Grape: "we anticipate (pending funding) for the tour to begin in August."
April 11, 2005
Getting Ready for Disaster: FEMA for Kids
photo library/ games games games (for example coloring book)
search FEMA for more photos, press releases, etc.,
(for example: 2005 Federal Disaster Declarations)
~We understand there's nothing we can do as individuals (plastic or paper?) about the steady deterioration of the environment but thanks to FEMA we can all help when nature gets out of control and disaster strikes.
April 10, 2005
Book Review: Goodbye to Privacy
"In the past five years, what most of us only recently thought of as ''nobody's business'' has become the big business of everybody's business.
Robert O'Harrow Jr.'s ''No Place to Hide'' might just do for privacy protection what Rachel Carson's ''Silent Spring'' did for environmental protection nearly a half-century ago. The author, a reporter for The Washington Post, does not write in anger. Sputtering outrage, which characterizes the writing of many of us in the anti-snooping minority, is not O'Harrow's style. His is the work of a careful, thorough, enterprising reporter, possibly the only one assigned to the privacy beat by a major American newspaper. He has interviewed many of the major, and largely unknown, players in the world of surveillance and dossier assembly, and provides extensive source notes in the back of his book. He not only reports their professions of patriotism and plausible arguments about the necessity of screening to security, but explains the profitability to modern business of ''consumer relationship management.'' "
article by William Safire [signin/register: unknown/unknown]
See also the Democracy Now's radio interview transcript with Robert O'Harrow Jr.
"...after Poindexter left the post (Information Awareness Office at the Defense Department) that interest in the intelligence community actually increased ...the program may be gone, as I say, but it's not forgotten. Components of it are very much alive in the black world, in the classified world. And there are components of it that were killed but continue in other agencies so that you see there's a program called HS-ARPA, Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency. They're pursuing exactly some of the same things that Poindexter was. There's a data mining operation at the FBI that very few people have paid attention to. The CIA has a program that's similar, and of course, the NSA is pursuing a program that involves massive amounts of data. So, I would say that the notion of Total Information Awareness being dead, a lot of people have talked about it, it’s still alive, but in fact, I think I have documented pretty clearly for the first time the extent of the research continuing."
[image via google/ not with above]
Testing Pesticides on Babies; EPA Forced to Stop
Washington - Stephen L. Johnson, the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Friday that he was canceling a study of the effects of pesticides on infants and babies, a day after two Democratic senators said they would block his confirmation if the research continued.
Rich Hood, a spokesman for the agency, acknowledged that Mr. Johnson had canceled the test because of the objections to his confirmation. "They are pretty juxtaposed in time, aren't they?" Mr. Hood said. "There is clearly a connection."
But Mr. Hood said the opposition was not the only reason for the cancellation.
"Mr. Johnson said in a meeting this morning that, his confirmation aside, he had come to pose serious questions as to whether or not this study was the appropriate thing to do," he said.
A recruiting flier for the program, called the Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study, or Cheers, offered $970, a free camcorder, a bib and a T-shirt to parents whose infants or babies were exposed to pesticides if the parents completed the two-year study. The requirements for participation were living in Duval County, Fla., having a baby under 3 months old or 9 to 12 months old, and "spraying pesticides inside your home routinely."
The study was being paid for in part by the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that includes pesticide makers.
~Was this EPA study an example of the compassionate conservatives "culture of life"?
image via this BBC story
See also from Ohio State U. How Pesticides Affect Humans
April 09, 2005
This photo shows a group of Afghan woman watching a film in Afghanistan before the Taliban regime forbid cinemas (Image prior to the Freedom War)
~ Not true, in fact it's a group of Mother Teresa's nuns watching JPII burial. How many pics like this have been used for bad purposes by the media or psyops in these years?
View AP image
April 08, 2005
Silicone bands madness
In this capitalist World we live in it seems it's fair to use every event to sell our ideas or, simply, earn some bucks.
JP2 death is a major event that has arisen a catholic identity search in many people and this catholic weekly newspaper has found a great way to collect funds with it.
Via: Tanz mit mir
Wal-Mart's Culture of Crime & Greed
Wal-Mart is no free-market miracle: Its profits are a result of an artificial suppression of wages. Wal-Mart could not operate in a truly free market - if such a thing even existed.
~A little reminder that "low-low-prices" along with freedom! and (who knew?) the free market isn't (sic) free.
image via cieciel/ not with story
April 07, 2005
US May be Holding Iraqi Women Hostage
A spokesman said the women were detained as insurgent suspects, not hostages. The latter would be a breach of international law, human rights experts say; it could, however, be legitimate to hold relatives as suspects in their own right.
"The US army and Iraqi police did detain two females suspected of collaboration with anti-Iraqi forces," Major Donn Latimer of the 3rd Infantry Division told Reuters, using a term employed by US troops to describe guerrilla insurgents.
"Evidence was found at the residence that indicates clear knowledge of an intent to harm coalition forces," Latimer said.
"Currently their disposition is under review."
~Potato, Potaato. I'm sure this method can save American lives, so might dangling babies out of windows. I'm also sure there's people in the military that condemn these practices. Isn't it odd that we don't hear from them, that reporters haven't found people in the Pentagon to go on the record against kidnapping or the "holding" of relatives of insurgent suspects? Until and if such time hearings are held? Jobs and pensions in exchange for silent solidarity. Why do people feel pride in such a monolithic machine as the military? (They're grateful it spares them? Relieved that it's force is not directed at them?)
image via google/ Not with above
Hey Kids No Comics! (Reprise)
How the comic book almost disappeared
If you need proof, just take a stroll through your local 7-Eleven. You'd be hard pressed to find any evidence of kids’ comics or the iconic racks they used to call home. That’s because the continent’s largest convenience store chain did away with wire comic racks over the past decade, citing a lack of demand for kids’ comics.
I think we have simply lost the habit of telling stories to children. And how sad is that?”
article By Brad Mackay
~Jason (Atomgrid) notes:
"Most of the children's comic books presently available at your local direct market comic shop are licensed television products, like The Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory, Teen Titans, or Scooby-Doo. This doesn't make them bad and they are perfectly suitable for children.
That there is a lack of spinner racks in convenience stores is a problem between (comic book) distributors and certain kinds of retail locations.
One of those "he who controls the means of distribution controls the means of production" caveats that your local art Marxists seem to invariably overlook. And it's unlikely sales of comics in such a location (where tampons can be marked up to US$500 per box) would cover the costs of retail space that the minimal square footage a spinner rack requires, plus the labor involved with stocking and distributor returns.
One possible approach is educational comics which appeal to a child's innate sense of laziness.
Fundamentally, what killed comics is that for a while now it's been cheaper to produce and distribute a series of moving images than it is to produce and distribute sequential images, and with much greater returns on investment and increased audience size."
(emphasis ed.)
[image via acme catalog/ not with article]
Ad Campaigns by Photographers
helmut newton; mugler, monaco
link to recent magazine/bill-board quality photos of designer-brand products with models from more than 50 photographers.
via jozworld
~When I was young what was beautiful and stylish was not defined by the rich and their suppliers. It was a simpler time when appliances weren't so multi-tasking, when products weren't so meaningful, before all images became electrons. We weren't so branded then.
Zero-One San Jose Art Festival
The Interactive City Theme (excerpt)
"The city has always been a site of transformation: of lives, of populations, even of civilizations. With the rise of the mega city, however; with the advent of 24 x 7 rush hours; with the inexorable conversion of public space into commercial space; with the rise of surveillance; with the computer-assisted precision of redlining; with the viral advance of the xenophobic, the contemporary city is weighted down. We dream of something more. Not some something planned and canned, like another confectionary spectacle. Something that can respond to our dreams. Something that will transform with us, not just perform change on us, like an operation.
The Interactive City theme seeks urban-scale projects for which the city is not merel a palimpsest of our desires but an active participant in their formation. From dynamic architectural skins to composite sky portraits to walking in someone else’s shoes to geocaches of urban lore to cybrid games with a global audience, projects for Interactive City should transform the “new” technologies of mobile and pervasive computing, ubiquitous networks, and locative media into experiences that matter.
more from the press release/ festival index (other themes, etc.)
~I get giddy when reading cutting edge art descriptions and proposals: architectural skins; ubiquitous networks; locative media: experiences that matter! Utopia! Here! NOW!
[image via google/ not from above]
April 06, 2005
Bondage Jukebox
~There's an absence of euphemism in these song titles. Does BDSM attract people with poor language skills? The poetically impoverished? Symbol-simpletons? Is there a link between reading comprehension and sexual orientation? The lack of fluency with metaphors and the ease in which one sexually imprints on objects, materials, scenes? (Between reading skills and poor fashion sense?) Or is it that there are BDSM practices so physically taxing that they cause injury to the language centers of the brain?
Nothin' 'bout love makes sense.
[google photo/ not with BDSM Jukebox]
Eric Kroll Gallery
fetish usa presents
18 and Older link to 20 photos/products/personalities/etc.
10 more Kroll photos of people enjoying the application and exhibition of various materials, gadgets and tools on human flesh.
~More artful than not. These people remind me I've no sense of fashion.
Military Recruiters Targeting Minority Teens
Marine Sgt. Rick Carloss is as familiar to students as some teachers at Downey High School. He does push-ups with students during PE classes and plays in faculty basketball games. During lunch, he hands out key chains, T-shirts and posters that proclaim: "Think of Me As Your New Guidance Counselor."
As the conflict in Iraq entered its third year, the Marines missed their monthly recruiting goals in January through March for the first time in a decade, and the Army and the National Guard also fell short of their needs. This year, the Army and the Marines plan not only to increase the number of recruiters, but also to penetrate high schools more deeply, especially those least likely to send graduates to college.
For Carloss and other recruiters, part of the way has been cleared by the No Child Left Behind education law of 2002, which provides the military with students' home addresses and telephone numbers. It also guarantees that any school that allows college or job recruiters on campus must make the same provision for the military.
~I wonder what the Democrats think about this method of recruiting children for the military? No comment? Support the troops? I wonder how many Congresspeople's kids and grandkids will be recruited into the military (not for West Point, Annapolis or Colorado) from high-schools this year?
Fun in the Great Outdoors
2 Hats
~I'm sure there's a botanical term for these 'hats' but I'm too lazy to look it up. This photo documents more the actions of weathering, wind, moisture, ice and thaw, than growth...physics over biology. At these latitudes inorganic life...wind, rain, frost, snow, ice, thaw; ad absurdum...runs the show for months at a time. In a week or so the organic will begin again to take center stage. Hats off.
Thousands mourners express loss of the Pope
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -- Mourners streaming out of St. Peter's Basilica after paying their last respects to Pope John Paul II have spoken of feeling grief, hope and a sense of history as they filed past his body.
Most waited for hours, some all day Monday, for a chance to see the pope lying in state in Christendom's largest church, on a spot from which he often addressed the faithful.
Tens of thousands more people were waiting for their turn.
~ Image has nothing to do with the post but with the thousands of people that die every year of AIDS and starvation all around the World and don't seem to be as important for the media and the mourners as the death of a single man. Click here to read more.
Play in Focus
UK Photo Project
"What have children shown to be important to them for their play through their photographs?"
link to research paper/project outline/kids photos/etc.
April 05, 2005
Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)
Iraq is one of the most heavily mined nations in the world. As of early 2003, it was estimated that there were over 10 million mines already in the ground—8 million antipersonnel (AP) and 2 million antitank (AT), with Iraq both a producer and exporter of AP mines.
Iraq is considered one of the most mine-infested nations in the world.
Some of the IEDs have been remotely detonated using relatively simple, readily available low-technology devices, such as garage door openers, car alarms, key fobs, door bells, toy car remotes, FRS and GMRS two-way radios, cellular telephones and pagers – which enable radio frequency command detonation. Therefore, this implies that observation of the target area probably requires line-of-sight observation points in many cases. However, the adaptation of using radios, cell phones and other remote control devices has given the enemy the standoff ability to watch forces from a distance and not be compromised.
IEDs Iraq article / IEDs Booby-traps article
~So if there wasn't ordinance like this artillery shell in Iraq, there would still be millions of land-mines that could be recycled into albeit smaller improvised explosive devices (IEDs)? Has any of Iraq's ordinance and land-mines come from American corporations? Wouldn't people, familes of dead and wounded veterans, like to know which American companies? Made-in the USA and all that. Maybe the weapons manufacturers along with the garage-door opener, radio, and cell-phone makers could sponsor yearly picnics for survivors and their families? College scholarships? Vocational training? Widows pensions? Toys for tots? Extended medical insurance? Coupons? Of course these corporations never imagined their devices and weapons would be used on American soldiers, still... as a goodwill gesture? ...for those heroes who've made the ultimate