June 29, 2005
Censored by US Government
On File
"...the DOJ has wisely made the world safer by forcing anyone even
remotely connected with publishing erotic images to keep elaborate
files on the true identities of everyone in said images for seven
years. And we're even more secure because law enforcement officers can wander into adult businesses any time they want, without a court order, and go through every single file for hours or days at a time."
related: link ~Retroactively
We Don't Do That Here
Members of Alpha company 1/32 Infantry 10th Mountain Division provide perimeter security as other members of their company participate in the daytime raid of a shop suspected of producing and selling anticoalition CD's and DVD's in the town of Al Fallujah, Iraq Jan. 24, 2004 during Operation Iraqi Freedom. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Charles B. Johnson) @
~We did (do) it over there.
Miss Transvestite
Olivia holds her trophy after winning the title of Miss Transvestite out of 30 contestants in Jakarta, Indonesia, Sunday night, June 26, 2005. Islamic hardliners barged in on Indonesia's transvestite beauty pageant, panicking its skimpily dressed contestants but failing to stop the show - the second year running the event has been staged in the world's most populous Muslim nation. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim) @
~Isn't news of an event like this in a place like this strangely hopeful (for tolerance fetishists anyway)?
American gays (transvestite or not) should take a cue from the Mormons and sponsor 'missions' or out-reach programs to Christian churches and communities all over America until (both) their panics (sic) subside.
Univ. of Connecticut Offering Masters Degree In Homeland Security
"Students will learn how to respond to disasters such as outbreaks of diseases or terrorist attacks that endanger food supplies.
...in partnership with the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California."
press release via Harpers Weekly
related:
Billions in States’ Homeland Purchases Kept in the Dark
also:
for homeland security
(Estimated number of matches: 2180)
June 28, 2005
World Tribunal On Iraq Findings
"...the jury has established the following charges against the Governments of the US and the UK:
Planning, preparing, and waging the supreme crime of a war of aggression in contravention of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles.
Targeting the civilian population of Iraq and civilian infrastructure
Using disproportionate force and indiscriminate weapon systems
Failing to safeguard the lives of civilians during military activities and during the occupation period thereafter
Using deadly violence against peaceful protestors
Imposing punishments without charge or trial, including collective punishment
Subjecting Iraqi soldiers and civilians to torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment
Re-writing the laws of a country that has been illegally invaded and occupied
Willfully devastating the environment
Actively creating conditions under which the status of Iraqi women has seriously been degraded
Failing to protect humanity's rich archaeological and cultural heritage in Iraq
Obstructing the right to information, including the censoring of Iraqi media
Redefining torture in violation of international law, to allow use of torture and illegal detentions"
press release via TruthOut
~When bad governments do bad things, sometimes people take notice.
Today Google News' lists 127 links to stories about the "world tribunal on iraq". The "taste of chicago" another event, albeit yearly, has 315 news links on google.
[image via google/not with above links]
"Frontal Lobes of Youths" Affected by Violent Video Games
"On June 9, 2005, the Indiana University School of Medicine issued a news release concerning yet another study indicating that exposure to violent media does affect children negatively.
The new study, published in this year's May/June issue of the Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography and led by Dr. Vincent Mathews of the IUSM, builds on earlier research, published in December of 2002, that "showed less brain activity in the frontal lobe of youths with an aggression disorder as they watched violent video games."
The new study sought to explore how media violence affected children without pre-existing aggression problems and, thus, used two groups of children. According to the news release, "all the members of one group had a chronic pattern of violent behavior and had been diagnosed with disruptive behavior disorder (DBD)" and "the second or control group had no history of behavior problems." Of the DBD group, 58% had high exposure to media violence, with 42% of the control group having similar exposure.
"The fMRI brain images revealed that members of the control group (those without a history of behavior problems) with high prior exposure showed less activity in the frontal cortex of the brain…All of the DBD group, even those without high violent media exposure, showed a similar pattern of frontal cortex activity. Less activity in the frontal cortex has been linked to poorer self control and attention problems," according to the IUSM release. "In contrast to the DBD group and the control group with high media violence exposure, the members of the control group without high violent media exposure showed more frontal cortex activity."
"This observation is the first demonstration of differences in brain function being associated with media violence exposure," said Dr. Mathews. "We found that individuals in the control group with high media violence exposure showed a brain activation pattern similar to the pattern of the aggressive group."
article (Scroll down)
[Another version:]
"Children who have been exposed to high levels of media violence have shown brain function patterns similar to children with aggressive behavior disorders, according to new research in the Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography's May/June issue. Researchers found children with high levels of exposure to media violence showed less activity in the part of the brain linked to self control and attention problems, the same results they found for children with aggressive behavior tendencies. Media violence was defined as television or video games depicting human injury. Dr. Vincent P. Matthews, a radiology professor from Indiana University School of Medicine who led the study, said it was the first demonstration of differences in brain function being associated with media violence exposure. Researchers cautioned that more testing is necessary to draw a conclusive link. @
~Diederik: "Anti-obscenitists concerned (with) the "frontal lobe[s] of youths". Quod erat demonstrandum Americans are much more sophisticated in their culture critique. I'm sometimes impressed by neuroclinical propaganda of these concerned citizens. Quod erat demonstrandum my naivety."
(Cieciel):This is your brain getting ready to kick some ass (getting ready to have it's ass kicked)? These are the brains of others who aren't familiar with what they're watching?
(The kids were watching videos of violent video games not playing them.)
Could this study be measuring boredom?
It would be interesting to compare the frontal lobe activity of these kids playing these same video games?
[grand theft auto graphic via google/ not above]
Nukes in the News: US Has Plans to Again Make Own Plutonium
~[Note: While reading this story about the need for plutonium (nuclear) batteries keep in mind this factoid: "Year by which every U.S. nuclear weapon will have reached the end of its original design life : 2014" (Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Energy) via Harper's Index]
"The Bush administration is planning the government's first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war...The substance, valued as a power source, is so radioactive that a speck can cause cancer.
Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years... Officials say the program could cost $1.5 billion and generate more than 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste.
"The real reason we're starting production is for national security," Timothy A. Frazier, head of radioisotope power systems at the Energy Department...He vigorously denied that any of the classified missions would involve nuclear arms, satellites or weapons in space.
Plutonium 238 has no central role in nuclear arms. Instead, it is valued for its steady heat, which can be turned into electricity. Nuclear batteries made of it are best known for powering spacecraft that go where sunlight is too dim to energize solar cells. For instance, they now power the Cassini probe exploring Saturn and its moons.
Federal and private experts unconnected to the project said the new plutonium would probably power devices for conducting espionage on land and under the sea. Even if no formal plans now exist to use the plutonium in space for military purposes, these experts said that the material could be used by the military to power compact spy satellites that would be hard for adversaries to track, evade or destroy.
Early in the nuclear era, the government became fascinated by plutonium 238 and used it regularly to make nuclear batteries that worked for years or decades...
story (NYTimes) via TruthOut
~Ralph Nader has labeled plutonium as "the most poisonous substance on earth". Google search brings up a number of recent articles which don't exactly refute that claim but suggest for example how rare plutonium is and how earlier accidental exposures to less concentrated forms hardly killed anyone.
Maybe the plutonium contractors can hold a press conference and give President Bush and other high ranking federal officials watches, cell phones, pacemakers, PDA's, etc. 'perpetually' powered by nuclear batteries from the Idaho Falls plant? What better way to show concerned Americans how environmentally safe plutonium as an energy source can be?
Isn't the idea of producing the most poisonous substance known to humankind in the name of 'national security' too precious for words?
Six or seven Presidents and their Congresses from 1946?-1980 were convinced by the best scientific and military experts at the time that the need to produce and test plutonium devices far outweighed the risks to the American people weren't they?
Now watch in the next few years as it happens again?
...also from the above story: "Today, the United States makes no plutonium 238 and instead relies on aging stockpiles or imports from Russia. By agreement with the Russians, it cannot use the imported material - some 35 pounds since the end of the cold war - for military purposes. With its domestic stockpile running low. Washington now wants to resume production..."
~It doesn't say here that the Russians can't or won't produce the 330 extra pounds of plutonium needed in the next 30 years for classified missions which in no way involve nuclear arms, satellites or weapons in space.
related:
NuclearNo
Russian Nuclear Non-Proliferation Site
How Britain's "Deep Throat" Leaked the Memos
"He was just a friend. So I had no great expectations of the meeting we arranged in a quiet West End bar. I was just expecting a convivial drink, with the usual exchange of gossip, the catching-up on how our lives were going.
Almost immediately it was clear that this time it would be something more. The place was empty, but my friend chose the most secluded spot he could find. He was clearly nervous...
--------
Ministry of Defence figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that virtually none were used in March and April; but between May and August an average of 10 tons were dropped each month, with the RAF taking just as big a role in the "spikes of activity" as their US colleagues. Then in September the figure shot up again, with allied aircraft dropping 54.6 tons."
~Too bad Hollywood no longer makes (can sell) movies about the press. Maybe MerchantIvory will turn this story into a smaller, more 'insular' British version of All the President's Men? It could happen.
[image via amazon.com/ not with story]
June 27, 2005
Chicago Pairs Surveillance Cameras with Gunshot Recognition Systems
Chicago officials have installed 30 of the devices alongside video surveillance cameras in high-crime neighborhoods, with 12 more on the way, and dozens more to follow...
The system's formal name is Smart Sensor Enabled Neural Threat Recognition and Identification -- or SENTRI. And the technology is not just gaining favor in Chicago.
In Los Angeles County, the sheriff's department plans to deploy 20 units in a pilot test, and officials in Tijuana, Mexico, recently bought 353 units, (Bryan) Baker (chief executive officer of Safety Dynamics in Oak Brook, which makes the systems) said. Police in Philadelphia and San Francisco are close to launching test programs of their own, and New Orleans and Atlanta have also made inquiries.
Safety Dynamics also works with the U.S. Army and Navy, developing projects that could detect a range of sounds like diesel trucks slowing in an unexpected location or breaking glass, Baker said. On Tuesday, a military contractor in Iraq responsible for detecting explosive devices contacted the company about mounting systems on vehicles that carry U.S. military personnel.
``They want to put 20 of them on Humvees to be able to detect gunshots,'' Baker said. ``The soldiers, they're getting shot at, but they don't know where the shots are coming from.''
press release Chicago Tribune (registration required)/
see also news at Safety Dynamics
[The Sentri System Solution @]
Limbermen
"Men's flexibility at it's best"
for example...
"Here you will find a lot of images and informations about men's efforts in flexibility. Check out the pictures and the links."
thanks diederik
Daily War Porn or Silver Stars Affirm One Unit's Mettle
Women Play Key Roles In Combat Near Baghdad
"I really don't know who killed who," said (Sgt. Leigh Ann) Hester, who stands 5-foot-4, speaks with a twang and walks with a swagger. "He could have got three, I could have got one, I don't know. I know for sure I got at least one."
The U.S. military handed out combat citations last week for the March 20 battle, in which a military police squad of two women and eight men from the Kentucky Army National Guard killed 27 insurgents and wounded six in an orchard south of Baghdad. Hester won the Silver Star. She was the first female soldier to receive the award for exceptional valor since World War II and the first ever to be cited for close combat.
~Joerg reflects: "After World War II, there was a large set of pulp fiction emerging in Germany (called "Landser") with tales of heroic (German) fighting in those WWII battles. Sadly enough, this article from the Washington Post could be taken from Landser. For me as a German it's simply shocking to see this in a mainstream US newspaper. It's really just cheap pulp fiction for a country where the vast majority of people seems to crave Hollywood-style junk."
[image via google/ not with above]
Top Five Gitmo Falsehoods
for example:
Falsehood #3: The Geneva Conventions apply only to prisoners of war
article via Media Matters for America
World Tribunal on Iraq
related reports from WTI via truthout
[May 17, 2005 WTI Activists in front of US Embassy Brussels]
~For what its worth as of today Google News links to 67 news stories on the "World Tribunal on Iraq".
Overheard at Starbucks
"A friend of yours? What was he on about?"
-"He says, 'they' force him to choose. They use pesticide poppers on him and his family to speed up 'the choosing', to make it significant. And while he's never chosen correctly and hasn't a clue what might change if he did...the people with the poppers never stop...he's absolutely certain there are many people who've never made the wrong choice, who always choose right."
"The people with the poppers?"
-"No. The people who supply and 'hire' the people with the poppers."
June 26, 2005
From Abject to Object: Women's Bodybuilding
"Do muscles have gender, or are they, on the contrary,
ungendered human meat? Other than the few muscles
associated with their sexual organs, men and women have the
same muscles. Does this make muscles neuter, or perhaps
neutral? Is there some "difference" between the biceps of a
male and those of a female other than, possibly, that of
size? If a woman's biceps, or quadriceps, are bigger than a
man's, are hers more masculine than his? In the eyes of
most beholders, the more muscle a woman has, the more
"masculine" she is. The same, of course, is true for men:
the more muscle a man has, the more masculine he is too.
Bodybuilding in a sense is a sport dedicated to wiping out
"femininity," insofar as femininity has for centuries
connoted softness, passivity, non-aggressivity, and physical
weakness. Eradicating femininity just may be the purpose of
both male and female bodybuilders. Even so, for men to wage
war on femininity, whether their own or somebody else's, is
nothing new. For women, however, it is."
article Copyright (c) 1991 by Marcia Ian
[a free sample from Bil Dobbins.com
not with article]
We Don't Do That Here
(detail)
woodblock-illustrated book, ink on paper
30.8 x 26.3 cm
Ming dynasty, Wanli reign
1615
from Taoism & the Arts of China
(Article with more small illustrations)
~"Anatomy" as a map everyone, not just health professonals, could use for good health.
Bionic Arm
"What we did is take the four major nerves that used to go down his arm and transferred them to his chest muscle," said Dr. Todd Kuiken. (of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago)
Now, (Jessie) Sullivan can think about bending his arm or closing his hand and electrodes in his chest pick up those impulses and activate his highly experimental robotic arm.
"It's almost automatic," he said. "It's not as good as what I had before, but it is the best so far."
The transplanted nerves do more than just drive the arm... They also carry sensations.
Kuiken and Sullivan demonstrated how a touch to various areas of the patient's chest will trigger sensation, which Sullivan feels is coming from his mechanical arm.
RIC doctors are currently experimenting with devices that let Sullivan feel what his prosthetic hand touches, as well.
With a typical prosthetic device, the user can control one motor at a time, but Sullivan's new system can control more than one motor at a time, sometimes as many as three or four.
~Will people oneday soon voluntarily choose 'neural engineering' to physically extend their nervous systems to various mechanical devices at the cost of a limb or two?
UCSC Takes Over Operation of NASA Ames Airborne Sensor Facility
The Airborne Sensor Facility develops and maintains a variety of aircraft and sensor systems for remote sensing research.
The sensors--including spectroradiometers and other digital imaging devices--are placed on a variety of NASA aircraft that fly at altitudes between a few hundred feet and 13 miles. These aircraft include both piloted airplanes and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Because they fly closer to the ground than satellites...(airborne sensors)...can gather more detailed data at higher resolutions. One pixel of information from an airborne sensor covers an area on a scale of inches to yards, rather than miles. In addition, researchers have more control over the area being surveyed, the resolution at which they gather data, and the dates and times of the surveys.
(Eli Silver, a professor of Earth sciences at UCSC who was named principal investigator of the facility in April) said he wants to develop remote sensing technology that will eventually help researchers detect life in extreme environments, including Mars. His team currently analyzes the spectral properties of fossil formations and living bacterial communities associated with coldwater seeps and volcanic geothermal areas on Earth. The sensors they have developed can record over a hundred separate wavelengths of light, which makes it possible to recognize the distinctive spectral signatures of a large variety of minerals and bacteria.
With the help of the Airborne Sensor Facility, Silver and his colleagues can test their sensors' ability to pick up fossil or bacterial signatures from different altitudes.
The smallest UAVs are approximately the size of a large remote-controlled model airplane (100 pounds, 12-foot wingspan) and their itinerary can be controlled by radio or preprogrammed before a flight. Their operation does not require flight crews or landing strips and would be practical in developing countries with minimal infrastructure.
Some UAVs can fly for 24 hours at a time, which would make it possible to follow a complete tidal cycle (Raphael Kudela, an assistant professor of ocean sciences) said.
Another advantage of UAVs is that they can be sent to explore very inhospitable environments.
"In the future, we could use unmanned vehicles to study volcanoes," Silver said.
~Flying robots with special 'cameras'.
June 25, 2005
Bibliography: GALLOWS AND GOTHIC HUMOR...
...(INCLUDES DISGUSTING, GROTESQUE, INSULTING, SICK, SUBVERSIVE, OBSCENE, POLITICALLY INCORRECT, BLACK AND TRAGICOMIC HUMOR: by Don L. F. Nilsen
http://www.hnu.edu/ishs/ISHSbibs/GALLOWS.doc
thanks diederik
related?
@"By the end of the Gothic period, the carving of gargoyles grew more elaborate. Human figures appeared alongside fantastic beasts, as lighthearted comic relief more often than as guardians. Humor is a major feature of the Gothic grotesque. Many sculptural series depict characters from the margins of society, not simply as diverting ornamentation, but as characters in a topsy-turvy world on edge."
"Grotesque Humor" via Gravely Gorgeous (Cornell Library)
Billion$ in Homeland $ecurity Purchases Kept in the Dark
About $8 billion in homeland security funds has been doled out to states since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but the public has little chance of knowing how all of that money is being spent.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers discovered that Colorado did not have a state homeland security plan, yet it has spent $130 million.
“How the hell do you spend $130 million for homeland security when you don’t have a damn plan,” (Sen. Bob Hagedorn, a Democrat, asks)
~"We're in the money, we're in the money;
We've got a lot of what it takes to get along! @
June 24, 2005
Full Colour Night Photography
I was reading Ciecel's post on weather photography and this gallery I saw some days ago came to my mind.
I got to his album while searching a rainy day scene for a panorama.
Marketers Scan Blogs for Marketing Insights
"On-line Anthropology" (WUB)
"...a growing number of marketers are using new technology to analyze blogs and other "consumer-generated media" -- a category that includes chat groups, message boards and electronic forums -- to hear what is being said online about new products, old ad campaigns and aging brands. Purveyors of the new methodology and their clients say blog-watching can be cheaper, faster and less biased than such staples of consumer research as focus groups and surveys.
Blog-monitoring services typically charge big companies $30,000 to $100,000 a year. They say their technology goes beyond basic tools, such as keyword searches or counting links from one Web site to another, both features available at no charge from online services such as Technorati.com and Yahoo's Buzz Index.
Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm started by veterans of Procter & Gamble Co., has a free Web site, BlogPulse, where users can enter up to three keywords and see how they compare. Before the latest "Star Wars" release, mentions of Natalie Portman briefly topped those of Paris Hilton, indicating the movie's pre-release marketing was making an impression.
Some companies have developed text-analysis techniques as the result of funding or contracts from the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence services that monitor newspapers and other media. The technologies make use of software technologies known as "natural-language processing" and "unstructured-data mining" to understand even ungrammatical writing.
Bernice Cramer, vice president of market intelligence for Polaroid Corp., a unit of Petters Group Worldwide, says she uses Intelliseek's service. "If you look for it manually, you'll spend months searching through a lot of junk," she says. Polaroid recently found that consumers online frequently discuss photo longevity and archiving, making that an important issue in product development.
Umbria Communications, with clients including Sprint Corp. and Electronic Arts Inc., says its natural-language analysis can determine blogger demographics based on language, subject matter and acronyms. OMG ("oh my God!") or POS ("parent over shoulder") are expressions defining Generation Y girls, or those ages 10 to 25; FUBAR ("fouled up beyond all recognition") is often used by male baby boomers."
press release (WSJ)
~Is my family the only one which avoids brands advertised on television and products we notice 'placed' in movies?
Magazine Covers: Factual Detective Stories
The Canadian True Crime Magazine of the 1940s and 1950s
for example:
link to gallery (McGill U.'s 'Culture of Cities')
FOIA Exemption Protects Shit
A Freedom of Information Act exemption, written into law that regulates farm waste, prohibits....Delaware... citizen(s) -- from viewing farm soil- and manure-testing records kept for each poultry farm in the state.
also: In Wilmington, FOIA loopholes threaten to bar citizens from learning more about government responses to foul odors plaguing their neighborhoods.
The Delaware Solid Waste Authority contends that a lawsuit between it and the contractor that operates the Cherry Island landfill-gas collection system appears to be reason enough to withhold from The News Journal and from citizens records of public complaints about odors emanating from the landfill.
Pentagon Creating Student Database
...or if you prefer the CBS News headline Teen Database Worries Critics
The Defense Department, faced with enlistment shortfalls, is working with a private company to collect information on high school students ages 16-to-18 and all college students.
The database will be managed by BeNow Inc. of Wakefield, Mass. and will include birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.
Additional data in the new system will be collected from commercial data brokers, state drivers' license records and other sources, including information already held by the military, the (Washington) Post reports.
...the military provides no guarantees it will not turn over the information to law enforcement, counterintelligence and other government agencies... the Federal Register notice says the military retains the right to do so.
"Without your consent the Defense Department can take data out of the system and share it with other agencies," (Chris Jay Hoofnagle, a director with the Electronic Privacy Information Center said.)
Study: Violent Boys in Violent Neighborhoods Are Less Prone to Depression
"Violent adolescent boys in neighborhoods where they routinely witness violence tend to be less depressed than other violent youths."
press release (study by Raymond Swisher of Cornell University)
~Are depressed kids living with depressed care-givers less depressed than depressed kids in happy households?
No one 'witnesses' depression?
There are economically depressed cities and regions but no such thing as a clinically depressed neighborhoods?
Supreme Court Rules Cities Can Seize Homes for Private Projects
By a 5-4 vote, the high court upheld a ruling that New London, Connecticut, can seize the homes and businesses owned by seven families for a development project that will complement a nearby research facility by the Pfizer Inc. drug company.
Under the U.S. Constitution, governments can take private property through their so-called eminent domain powers in exchange for just compensation, but only when it is for public use.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court majority that the city's proposed disposition of the property at issue qualified as a "public use" under the Constitution.
June 23, 2005
Some Photo-labs Won't Print Digital Photos that Appear Too Professional
"There are a growing number of stories of amateur photographers being turned away by photofinishers for having photos that looked, at least in the eyes of a store clerk, too good to have been taken by anyone other than a professional.
Their photos have become collateral damage in the war on digital copyright infringement."
~Amateurs rool!! (This never happened to me.)
There's a genre of urban legends, a folklore classification for stories about retail photo-labs. This is an example of a true G-rated one that will spawn thousands of less-true, more fantastic variations.
People are anxious about the Patriot Act and the new powers of surveillance given to law enforcement and WalMart clerks
Isn't it interesting how copywrite infringement gets mixed in with surveillance and privacy concerns. (Or is just me?)
Individuals should be allowed to copywrite themselves.
Military Jokes and Humor
for example...
War is Hell
Once at the time of the world war, the Germans were looting all villages, of food, wine and women. Before they could enter one such village, the villagers decide to flee, except for one young man, who had a 90 year old grandmother. So the soldiers found the one occupied house and tore inside.
"Bring us some food."
The young man said " But I have only half a loaf of bread"
"War is Hell, bring us the food" So he gives them the last morsel of food.
"Bring us some wine"
"But I doubt if there is any in the house, you know how things are these days!"
"War is Hell, bring us the wine"
So the young man manages half a bottle and gives it to them.
"Now, bring us a woman"
"But everyone has left the village. The only female present here is my 90 year old grandmother!!"
"War is Hell, bring her to us"
The old woman is brought and she's so frail and weak that the soldiers decide against it and say "We'll let you off this time'"
"But," Granny cries, "War is Hell!!"
link to links for More Military 'Humor' via about.com
also: more recent(?) Iraq jokes/
Kill the Messenger; Hide the News
~Journalists have been killed by the US military in Iraq, this has made other journalists nervous. Mr. Weissman offers some remedies. Especially noteworthy for "image-spotters":
"...train soldiers to recognize the obvious differences between rocket launchers and TV cameras."
~AND:
" Military intelligence regularly monitors the uplink equipment that reporters use to transmit their stories and communicate by satellite phone. But, as the BBC's Nik Gowing discovered, the electronic intelligence mavens make no effort to distinguish between journalistic communications and those of enemy forces. All the sensing devices do is look for electronic traffic between the monitored uplinks and known enemies.
In Gowing's view, this led the Americans to order a rocket attack on the Kabul office of the Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera, whose journalists kept regular contact with the Taliban as part of their journalistic coverage."
story via truthout
When torture is an inspiration
Artists are sensible by definition as they have to express their feelings in their artwork, that's why every disturbing event can become a source of inspiration, the seed they will make a piece of art.
When Fernando Botero saw the AbuGhraib episodes of torture he was so impressed that he began to paint the scenes in his particular World.
He has not be the first nor the only one to reproduce the abuses in their works:
Sculpture by Abdul Karim Khalil
Colectivo El Perro "Democracia 05"
...
Overheard at Starbucks
"I live so minimally..."
-"You're an American with a car and a computer."
"...me and thou and the intermittent horizon-line."
-"Don't you mean interrupted horizon-line?
"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine; thou and the horizon-line. Anything more: clubs, bars, parties; the care and feeding of CD-players, PDA's, cell phones, etc. and it turns all 'Grand Guigno'l' in an instant.
The ringing in my ears is the perfect soundtrack for my life."
-"Perfect aria for your life."
"I think people are allergic to me."
-"You're not handsome or rich so there's no reason for people to want to know you... don't you mean you're 'allergic' to people?"
"No."
Jeb Bush Sics Prosecutor on Sciavo's Husband
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, citing an alleged time gap between when her husband found her and when he called 911.
story with Madeline Zane's comment.
~Maybe Florida can make a case against Michael Sciavo for wrongful death or murder. I wonder how many people sincerely believe he killed her? Was singularly responsible for cutting her down in her albeit less than prime?
If they can't try him for pulling the tubes on his wife maybe Jeb Bush can build a case over inconsistent statements Mr. Sciavo made to police 15 years ago. Cops arrest people on less evidence then that everyday. And many people would feel justice was being served?
June 22, 2005
Eyeballing the Buhriz Body Count
without weapons/ with weapons
[kids playing soccer/ armed insurgents?]
~Certainly our highly-trained professional soldiers in Iraq, who are doing a terrific job in an impossible situation, would never resort to planting weapons on children they had just killed.
Would it be a perverse sign of progress if they had needed to do just that?
Or have our soldiers in Iraq always been under the closest scrutiny, not by the American press, but by the citizens of Iraq; preventing them early on in most areas from killing with impunity, making the planting of weapons more necessary? Perhaps in certain situations or places and/or among some units SOP?
Santa Margarita (CA) Ecological Reserve Tests Early-Warning Fire Sensors
"The demonstration, scheduled for Thursday, June 23, will show the innovative sensors detecting a controlled burn and transmitting critical real-time information to the cell phones and pagers of investigators and fire fighters on-site.
With its 13 state-of-the-art wireless wildfire sensors, four weather stations and four remote cameras, the network is designed to detect and locate a fire the size of a tabletop from a quarter mile away. It will be integrated into the reserve’s telecommunications system, one of the world’s most extensive wireless environmental-sensor networks."
press release San Diego State University et.al.
~Am I now integrating information from various sensorial sources into a semi-public telecommunications system? Just checking.
Cartoon: A Short History of America
by R. Crumb
~related Terry Evans' landscape photos
Boyhood Studies: A Bibliographic Exploration
http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/GUS/BOYHOODSTUDIES.PDF
~Am I lucky or not there wasn't such a thing as 'boyhood studies' when I was a boy? Nobody cared to study us!(?)
Neither War Nor Peace
"Around the world, children and youth are engaged in armed conflict. Child Soldiers have been the focus of international attention for many years. But in countries that are not officially at war, many youth join armed organizations such as gangs, drug factions, cartels, death squads, para-militaries, and revolutionary groups.
This unique report compares armed groups in ten different countries as disparate as the USA and Ecuador. Researchers and activists from each country used a common format and questionairre to investigate the lives of youth involved in armed conflicts. While there are many differences between countries, the similarities of the voices of the children are haunting."
~Thank you police and the courts for keeping the armed conflict away from my house. I don't know how much of my taxes you're using to do just that or what you do when there's no crime to fight, but I feel lucky.
[more photos at the Chicago Hoodz Gallery]
Backyard Paradises
Stories, images and video of some of the most fascinating places on the globe link (KQED PBS Travelogue)
Government Spied, Lied to Congress
~or as AP headlined it: Gov't. Collected Airline Passenger Data
Washington - The federal agency in charge of aviation security (TSA) collected extensive personal information about airline passengers even though Congress forbade it and officials said they wouldn't do it, according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
The TSA and several airlines were embarrassed last year when it was revealed that airlines gave personal information on 12 million passengers to the government without the travelers' permission or knowledge. An inspector general's report found TSA misled the public about its role in acquiring the data.
Bruce Schneier, a security expert who serves on the TSA-appointed oversight panel for Secure Flight, said the agency was explicitly told not to try to verify passengers' identity with commercial data.
"They're doing what they want and they're working around any rules that exist," Schneier said.
~Who watches the watchers? (The TSA can make sure you'll never fly in this town again.)
Gallery: Monster Engine
for example:
"Dave DeVries takes kids' pictures of scary monsters and makes them a little more real and, strangely enough, a lot less scary." *
link via Memepool*
Newsletter: NetFuture
Technology and Human Responsibility
NetFuture is an electronic newsletter with postings every two-to-four weeks or so. It looks beyond the generally recognized "risks" of computer use such as privacy violations, unequal access, censorship, and dangerous computer glitches. It seeks especially to address those deep levels at which we half-consciously shape technology and are shaped by it. What is half-conscious can, after all, be made fully conscious, and we can take responsibility for it."
index by topic/ home page (Back Issues/Search)
~Technology and responsibility are rarely paired in print.
I'm reminded of "Give-a-hoot, Don't Pollute!"; as if here on the edge of America's rust belt the market-driven consumer choices individuals make and the daily routine me and my family follow can change the world!
I can't tell if NetFuture is for affluent aging new agers (New Aging!) or if it offers a broader critique, anyway there's a lot here.
[image via google/not found above]
June 21, 2005
What's Behind the Video Game Witch Hunt?
Self-appointed morality mavens are mounting a concerted, state-by-state campaign targeting politically incorrect video games.
story via politech
~First they came for the video games and I did nothing... but then they came for the pr0n?!
What I find interesting is why pragmatic politicians waited so long before trying to 'recapture values' by opposing violent games sold to kids.The video games industry no longer needs to donate to certain office holders? They should've learned something from the NRA (the National Rifle Assoc. supports most of the state assembly-people of both parties.)
Two Top Guns Shoot Blanks
By FRANK RICH
TO understand how the Bush administration has lost the public opinion war on Iraq it may be helpful to travel in H. G. Wells's time machine back to Oct. 30, 1938.
That was the Sunday night that Orson Welles staged the mother of all fake news events: his legendary radio adaptation of another Wells fantasy, "The War of the Worlds." The audience was told four times during the hourlong show that it was fiction, but to no avail. A month after Munich, Americans afflicted with war jitters were determined to believe the broadcast's phony news flashes that Martians had invaded New Jersey. Mobs fled their homes in a "wave of mass hysteria," as The New York Times described it on Page 1, clogging roads and communications systems. Two days later, in an editorial titled "Terror by Radio," The Times darkly observed that "what began as eentertainment' might readily have ended in disaster" and warned radio officials to mind their "adult responsibilities" and think twice before again mingling "news technique with fiction so terrifying."
That's one Times editorial, it can be said without equivocation, that didn't make a dent. Nearly seven decades later the mingling of news and fiction has become the default setting of American infotainment, and Americans have become so inured to it that the innocent radio listeners bamboozled by Welles might as well belong to another civilization. Nowhere is the distance between that America and our own more visible than in the hoopla surrounding the latest adaptation of "The War of the Worlds," the much-awaited Steven Spielberg movie opening June 29.
Like its broadcast predecessor, the new version has already proved to be a launching pad for an onslaught of suspect news bulletins. This time the headlines are less earthshaking than an invasion from outer space, but they are no less ubiquitous: in repeated public appearances, most famously on "Oprah," the Spielberg movie's star, the 42-year-old Tom Cruise, has fallen to his knees and jumped on couches to declare his undying love for the 26-year-old Katie Holmes, the co-star of another summer spectacular, "Batman Begins." Forget about those bygone Hollywood studio schemes to concoct publicity-generating off-screen romances for its stars-in-training. Here is a lavishly produced freak show, designed to play out in real time, enthusiastically enacted by the biggest star in the business. On Friday, after popping the big question to Ms. Holmes at the Eiffel Tower, Mr. Cruise promptly dragged his intended to a news conference.
But though the audience for this drama is as large as, if not larger than, that for Welles's, there's one big difference. The Cruise-Holmes romance is proving less credible to Americans in 2005 than a Martian invasion did to those of 1938. A People magazine poll found that 62 percent deem the story a stunt. To tabloid devotees, the reasons for Mr. Cruise's credibility gap are the perennial unsubstantiated questions about his sexuality and his very public affiliation with a church, Scientology, literally founded by a science-fiction writer. But something bigger is going on here. The subversion of reality that Welles slyly introduced into modern American media in 1938 has reached its culmination and a jaded public is at last in open revolt.
The boundary between reality and fiction has now been blurred to such an extent by show business, the news business and government alike that almost no shows produced by any of them are instantly accepted as truth. The market for fake news has become so oversaturated that a skeptical public is finally dismissing most of it as hooey until proven otherwise (unless it is labeled as fake news from the get-go, as it is by Jon Stewart). We'll devour the supposedly real Cruise-Holmes liaison for laughs but give it no more credence than a subplot on "Desperate Housewives."
Welles unwittingly set us on the path toward the utter destabilization of reality with "War of the Worlds," and then compounded the syndrome with his subsequent film masterpiece "Citizen Kane," a fictional biography of a thinly disguised William Randolph Hearst that invented the pseudo-journalistic docudrama. But it's only in the past few years that Welles's ideas have been taken completely over the top by his trashy heirs. Not only do we have TV movies bastardizing the history of celebrities living and dead, but there is also a steady parade of "real" celebrities playing themselves in their own fictionalized "reality" shows. (This summer alone, Bobby Brown, Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee, Hugh Hefner's girlfriends and Paris Hilton's mother are all getting their own series.) The Cruise-Holmes antics, not to mention the concurrent shenanigans of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, add yet another variant to this mix, shrewdly identified by Patrick Goldstein of The Los Angeles Times as "a new rogue genre in which celebrities act out their own reality show, free from the constraints of a network time slot or a staged setting, like a boardroom or a desert island."
Politicians who dive into this game by putting on their own reality shows think they are being very clever. But like Mr. Cruise, they're being busted by a backlash. John Kerry was the first to feel it: his stagy military pageant, complete with salute, at the Democratic National Convention came off as so phony that the greater (but more subtle) fictions of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth struck many as relatively real by comparison. George W. Bush proved a somewhat more accomplished performer - in his first term. With the help of Colin Powell and some nifty props, he effortlessly sold the country on Saddam W.M.D.'s. He got away with using a stunt turkey as the photo-op centerpiece during his surprise Thanksgiving 2003 visit to the troops in Iraq. His canned "Ask the President" campaign town-hall meetings -at which any potentially hostile questioner was either denied admittance or hustled out by goons - were slick enough to be paraded before unsuspecting viewers as actual news on local TV outlets, in the tradition of Welles's bogus "War of the Worlds" bulletins.
But the old magic is going kaput. Mr. Bush's 60-stop Social Security "presidential roadshow," his latest round of pre-scripted and heavily rehearsed faux town-hall meetings, hasn't repeated the success of "Ask the President." Support for private Social Security accounts actually declined as the tour played out and Mr. Bush increasingly sounded as if he were protesting too much. "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," the president said on May 24. He sounded as if he were channeling Mr. Cruise's desperate repetitions of his love for his "terrific lady."
The shelf life of the fakery that sold the war has also expired. On June 7, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found for the first time that a majority of Americans believe the war in Iraq has not made the United States safer. A week later Gallup found that a clear majority (59 percent) wants to withdraw some or all American troops. Most Americans tell pollsters the war isn't "worth it," and the top reasons they cite, said USA Today, include "fraudulent claims and no weapons of mass destruction found" and "the belief that Iraq posed no threat to the United States." The administration can keep boasting of the Iraqi military's progress in taking over for Americans and keep maintaining that, as Dick Cheney put it, the insurgency is in its "last throes." But when even the conservative Republican congressman who pushed the House cafeteria to rename French fries "freedom fries" (Walter B. Jones of North Carolina) argues for withdrawal, it's fruitless. Once a story line becomes incredible, it's hard to get the audience to fall for it again.
This, too, echoes the history of the Welles hoax. Three years after his "War of the Worlds," the real nightmare that America feared did arrive. Yet some radio listeners at first thought that the reports from Pearl Harbor were another ruse. Welles would later recall in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich that days after the Japanese attack, Franklin Roosevelt sent him a cable chiding him for having cried wolf with his faked war "news" of 1938.
Such is the overload of faked reality for Americans at this point that it will be far more difficult for the Bush administration than it was for F.D.R. to persuade the nation of an imminent threat without appearing to cry wolf. Nor can it easily get the country to believe that success in Iraq is just around the corner. Too many still remember that marvelous aircraft-carrier spectacle marking the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq - a fake reality show adapted, no less, from a Tom Cruise classic, "Top Gun." Some 25 months and 1,500 American deaths later, nothing short of a collaboration by Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg could make this war fly in America now.
thanks Joerg
~The Bush Dynasty has jumped-the-shark, barely six months into its second term? Their insanely-hyped, budget-busting road-show, the 'Liberation of Iraq' is having ratings problems. Is it time to get the weiners and marshmallows ready while this administration slo-mo crashes and burns? I'm sure Karl Rove and the neo-cons have a foreign-relations crisis or two up their sleeves that can have us all begging for their anointed leadership anytime they deem necessary. This is their golden age.
One of the H's at Unknown News notes: "I wonder about the Times' forthcoming policy of requiring paid admissions to read its columnists. At first I thought it was folly, but it occurs to me they have two of the best, in Rich and Krugman ... "
Newsletter: Art Deadlines List
A monthly newsletter (via email or paper) with several hundred announcements (every month!) listing art contests & competitions, art scholarships & grants, juried exhibitions, art jobs & internships, call for entries/proposals/papers, writing & photo contests, residencies, design & architecture competitions, auditions, casting calls, fellowships, festivals, funding, and other opportunities (including some that take place on the web) for artists, art educators and art students of all ages.
link to both paid & free newsletters
Images Illustrating Principles of Geomorphology
for example:
Till over granite. (Colorado, 1985)
more illustrations of principles by Professor Lisa Wells,
Vanderbilt University
~There are many geomorphology images (principles!) here but I wish we were given the option of seeing larger photos
Photo Essay: Alternative Imaging
(Chapter 5 from "THIS IS MY BODY": GENDER, TATTOOING AND RESISTANCE IN THE UNITED STATES)
"This experimental photo essay is an attempt to provide a more adequate description of women and tattooing. The women photographed were asked to come as they would like to be seen. Accompanying the woman's portrait is a page in her own (words) responding to my open-ended request to discuss her decision to get tattooed, the tattoo(s)' meaning and its (their) impact on her life."
for example:
Wendy
my skin is a map and i won't tell WHERE or WHAT the treasure is. i'm frightened and greedy. the legend is mine and you're lost.
no phone.
this is MY state MY GARDEN and i don't give directions
link to more portraits of 1990's tattooed women
or link to the complete thesis by Melissa M. Forbis (May, 1994)
~About the above Diederik remarked, "... makes me think of an excellent title for a conference paper: "get your sexuality out of my face". Actually i've just posted to some Croatia conference an abstract entitled: "Queering "the" Child Where it Hurts the Most. Or: What's Fundamentally Wrong about Eating Cookies?' Titles are important. Images are more important."
The Video Store Project
"This site is part of a larger dissertation project on the history of video retail and shifting attitudes toward motion pictures in America in the 1970's and 1980's."
for example: from 'Pr0n Video''s survey (Round Lake Beach, Illinois)
What were your customers like? What particularly memorable customers or events do you remember?
They were all pervets (sic). One came in and asked if I had any beef jerky fetish videos. That was an odd one.
During the period that you worked in video retail, what changes did you see taking place in the industry as a whole?
There were very little changes, as perverts thrive on the lack of change. All they wanted was the sex tapes, and I supplied that.
link to more storeowners' profiles
[image via google/not with project]
June 20, 2005
Media Ethics & Social Responsibility
~Various links to accountability-in-media-type sites.
~I can't remember seeing those two words, media ethics, paired together. "Ethics" is a 'snore-word' for the media; not a favorite of advertisers? Not for popular-consumption, best left to college students and their radical professors?
Do 'media-watchdogs' complain about the same sorts of reporting, the same kinds of stories? Or is everything filtered first through a political or public relations filter?
Do right-wing reporters or pr-flacks use different techniques then their left-wing counterparts? When reporters lie, do they all lie the same?
[image via google/ not above]
Lyric: Shimmy Like My Sister Kate
If I could shimmy like my sister Kate
Shake it like jelly on a plate
My mama wanted to know last night
How sister Kate could do it oh so nice
Now, all the boys in the neighborhood
Knew Kate could shimmy, and it's mighty good
I may be late but I'll be up to date
When I can shimmy like my sister Kate.
I mean, shake it like my sister Kate.
Now if I could shake it like my sister Kate,
Never stay home, stay out too late
I get my stuff about as high as a kite
You know I do it for you every night.
Now, all the boys in the neighborhood
Knew Kate could shimmy, and it's mighty good
I know I'm late but I'll be up to date
When I can shimmy like my sister Kate.
I mean, shake it like my sister Kate.
Related: "Laurence Bergreen's biography of Louis Armstrong "An Extravagant Life" says that when Louis joined Kid Ory's band he was asked to come up with number he could feature in. He came up with "an unashamedly filthy thing" called, variously, "Keep Off Katie's Head" or "Take Your Finger Outta Katie's Ass", possibly inspired by Kate Townsend, a Storyville madam who'd been barbarously murdered years before.
Part of it went:
Why don't you keep off Katie's head?,
Why don't you keep out of Katie's bed?
It's a shame to say this every day
She's like a little child at play
It's a shame how you're lying on her head,
I thought sure you would kill her dead
Why don't you be nice, boy, and take my advice
Keep off Katie's head I mean, Get out of Katie's bed.
------
from "I Remember Jazz" by Al Rose:
In 1939, four years before Piron died Al Rose visited him in New Orleans: I asked Piron about a piece that was copyrighted in his name, "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate," noting that Louis Armstrong had recently said Piron had stolen it from him. Piron's attitude toward Satch' was patronizing, but understanding. "Of course," he assured me, "that's not Louis' tune or mine or Pete's either. That tune is older than all of us. People always put different words to it. Some of them were too dirty to say in polite company." He sang me one brief and obscene version. "The way Louis did it didn't didn't have anything to do with his Sister Kate":
Gotta have 'em before it's too late,
They shake like jelly on a plate.
Big 'n juicy, soft an' round
Sweetest ones I ever found.
via Ohek Music History / see also Dance History Archives
shimmy gal
~Proctor?!
[more photos of shimmy gal from google, not above]
We Are Not Becoming a More Image-based Society
You've no doubt heard that we are fast exchanging text-based sensibilities for image-based ones. Nonsense! In no past century have our forbears absorbed as much text -- from book, newspaper, comic strip, magazine, billboard, and breakfast cereal box -- as we do today. And the further back you look, the more you find that people lived in an image-rich environment. The entire world was experienced as image because nature was ensouled; all its exterior manifestations were seen as the expressive face of an interior with which man could feel a kinship.
It is we who live in an image-deprived world -- a world of signs without signification, of surfaces without depth, a world of artificial, disconnected, rapidly changing, undigested, and mostly false, ugly imagery. The idea that an image should reveal something of the truth, that it should bring a higher and previously invisible reality to manifestation, is not one we spend a lot of time contemplating.
An image -- the human face, for example -- can only be an image by expressing an interior reality behind the visible surface. Many of our images today are in fact anti-images, testifying to the conviction that there is no reality beneath the surface (the image is the image of nothing). Many more give expression to what is either mindless or grotesque. And uncounted billions of dollars every year go into the devising of images whose sole purpose is to coerce, unconsciously, the buying habits of the viewer.
The images of past eras were largely given from the hand of nature. There was a certain protection in this, so far as truthfulness was concerned. Our own images increasingly result from artifice. This, I think, is good and necessary. Art is, or should be, one of the ways we begin to take creative responsibility for the world. We need to worry, not about the artificiality of images, but rather their emptiness and ugliness.
As we gain the option to spend as much time as we wish in various "alternative worlds," the qualities of these worlds begin to carry huge significance for our future. There is a reason, for example, why medical healing has been found to take place more quickly in natural settings than in stark, institutional ones, and until we can master the detailed shape of those reasons -- no small task -- we don't stand much chance of constructing healthy places.
It is sad to see so much purely technical energy put into the creation of virtual worlds, with scarcely a second thought given to the qualities, the revelatory or healing potentials, of whatever it is we create. Unless there is a world waiting and needing to be revealed, art scarcely matters. But if art does matter, it can only be because of the understanding it represents.
One hopes that, with our widespread access to computer graphics, we will finally get "artifice for artifice's sake" out of our systems, freeing ourselves to seek, in our own creative way and with the tools of our own choosing, what is true and good and beautiful.
via: Issue: NF #52, July 2, 1997 @ netfuture.org
CFP: My Life at the Gym: Feminist Perspectives on Community Through the Body
CALL FOR PAPERS
For an Edited Collection tentatively entitled
My Life at the Gym: Feminist Perspectives on Community through the Body
Editor seeks personal narratives, theoretical essays, poetry, or
fictional accounts for anthology. The collection will treat women
kinesthetically experiencing the body with other women, such as in
aerobics classes, weight training, dance, running and singing. Focus is
on non-competitive, non-sport connection and the company of women.
Humorous perceptions and analyses definitely welcome.
Abstracts (250-300 words) due September 5, 2005
Please send any inquiries and abstracts to:
Jo Malin (SUNY-Binghamton)
jmalin@binghamton.edu
from: genderstudies@kcgs.org.ua thanks diederik
DEFENDING GUANTANAMO:
SECRETARY RUMSFELD RELEASES INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF OF AMERICAN HOSPITALITY AT CAMP DELTA
'press release' via whitehouse.org thanks joerg
"All the News That Fits"
"There are at least 27 people tortured to death by US troops (the
number comes from the US army), there is the ongoing scandal about
Guantanamo Bay, there are no consequences for Abu Ghraib, there
is the ongoing investigation into massive voting irregeluarities in
Ohio (and no reform in Florida) and what does the New York Times
report about? Have a look. This is just pathetic."
via Conscientious joerg
June 19, 2005
US Lied to Britain Over Use of Napalm in Iraq War
Britain, which has no stockpiles of the weapons, ratified ...(the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets)... but the US did not.
The MK77 bombs, an evolution of the napalm used in Vietnam and Korea, carry kerosene-based jet fuel and polystyrene so that, like napalm, the gel sticks to structures and to its victims...
~Does this mean the USA has a 'not so special relationship' with Great Britain?
[image more links at bellaciao]
US Trained & Aided Uzbek Forces
Uzbek Ministries in Crackdown Received US Aid
Moscow - Uzbek law enforcement and security ministries implicated by witnesses in the deadly crackdown in the city of Andijon last month have for years received training and equipment from counterterrorism programs run by the United States, according to American officials and Congressional records.
story By C. J. Chivers and Thom Shanker The New York Times
via truthout
~That explains the absence of outrage among American politicians and America's free press.
Is America planting the seeds (fertilizing the flowers) for a Uzbek 'Taliban'?
E3 Girls ('Booth Babes')
for example:
"The best collection of E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) booth babes from past to present!! Our concept is simple create a trading floor for all E3 fanatics to upload and share their E3 babe pictures..."
~There are thousands of snapshots here of women at work.
June 18, 2005
Charges Dropped Against Father in Daughter's Murder
Kevin Fox was released from jail... after spending nearly 8 months behind bars...
More than a year ago, the DNA evidence taken from the crime scene and from Riley Fox's body was taken to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va. Nothing was ever done with it.
"Your assistant state's attorneys should know, 'Hey, this is an unreasonable delay -- we need to find out from the FBI that they've a nine-month backlog and let's get it somewhere where it can be tested, because public safety is at stake," he said.
Defense attorneys said prosecutors should have had the results in hand before taking action.
"If you want to take away one thought in this case, it's do the test before you make the arrest," said attorney Kathleen Zellner.
Two weeks ago, the court honored attorney Zellner's request to take DNA samples from the accused man for comparison to those taken from the girl's body.
~ The case was 'cleared' (the investigation halted) when the father was arrested. No mention here if the police are reopening the investigation. That'll probably depend upon how serious the family is in pursuing their lawsuits against the police and state attorney's office . Meanwhile there's a rapist-killer or killer's of a three-year-old girl still out there. (Maybe he or they moved.).
Fun With Photoshop
fingerpainting with photoshop
View image View image View image View image
Overheard at Starbucks
"If there were angels or concerned ancestors or benevolent earth-spirits watching over us, wouldn't they have gotten to the doctors and midwives before the late 19th century with the message, 'Wash your hands before and after touching every patient'?"
-"You're wondering how so many people can claim as their guiding light a diety..."
"...superior beings, astral entities, saints, prophets and seers too..."
-"...who kept the miracle of soap and water a secret for untold millenia?"
"Think of how many mothers and babies from the beginning of time died because of ignorance of the simpliest form of hygiene...the pointless carnage, the unnecessary suffering."
-"It's inconceivable."
-"Don't you find Oprah's angels at all inspiring, the least bit charming?"
"You mean all those dead presidents?"
The Murder of Emmett Till
...the Till case is one of a pair of decades-old civil rights crimes in which federal and state prosecutors are seeking a measure of justice." story
The Photograph of Emmett Till's Body
"Mamie Till Mobley, Emmett Till’s mother, describing the first time she saw Emmett's corpse.
MAMIE TILL MOBLEY: My father was on one side of me, and Rayfield Mooty was on the other side of me, and Gene was at my back. And I shrugged them. I said, “Turn me loose. I’ve got a job to do, and I don't have time to be fainting now.” I saw his tongue had been choked out and it was lying down on his chin. I saw that this eye was out, and it was lying about midway to cheek. I looked at this eye, and it was gone. I looked at the bridge of his nose, and it looked like someone had taken a meat chopper and chopped it. I looked at his teeth, because I took so much pride in his teeth. His teeth were the prettiest things I’d ever seen in my life, I thought. And I only saw two. Where are the rest of them? They had just been knocked out. And I was looking at his ears. His ears were like mine. They curled. They're not attached, and they curled up the same way mine are. And I didn't see the ear. Where's the ear? And that's when I discovered a hole about here, and I could see daylight on the other side. I said, now was it necessary to shoot him? If that's a bullet hole, was that necessary? And I also discovered that they had taken an axe, and they had gone straight down across his head, and the face and the back of the head were separate.
Well, I looked at Mr. Rayner, and Mr. Rayner wanted to know, was I going to have the casket opened? I said, “Oh, yes, we're going to open the casket.” He said, “Well, Ms. Bradley, do you want me to do something for the face? Want me to try to fix it up?” I said, “No. Let the people see what I have seen.” I said, “I want the world to see this, because there's no way I can tell this story and give them the visual picture of what my son looked like.”
The Killer's Confession in Look Magazine
Just months after Emmett Till's murder, Look magazine published "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi," in which Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam confessed to the crime. article
The Movie "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till" by Keith Beauchamp
"Well, through my investigation, while producing the film, I came across that up to 14 people was involved with the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Louis Till... Right now, there’s five people who could be possibly indicted and charged for the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Louis Till.
...it started off as research material to produce a feature film. It wasn't supposed to be a documentary. It wasn't until I got into Mississippi and started finding eyewitnesses who -- some of these people have never spoke publicly before -- that I realized that I wasn't taking interviews, I was actually taking depositions and decided to hurry up and put it in a package in a way that I could get it out to the masses, in hopes of getting the case reopened.
interview/article/ Ebert's Review /background info
~According to an historian on this WBEZ Odyssey program the above photo taken by a black photographer appeared in the Chicago Defender and Jet magazine and was nationally and internationally circulated. It wasn't printed in any white-owned newspapers in the north or the south. And according to a google image search, Look Magazine didn't publish it along with it's "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi" either.
(I can almost understand why Buddhist monks set themselves on fire as a form of protest; looking at the way this highly publized murder was ignored by the authorities.)
EPA ENCOURAGING PESTICIDE COMPANIES TO CONDUCT HUMAN STUDIES
At a recent EPA office groundbreaking in Denver, (EPA Administrator Stephen) Johnson decried Congressional interference in the CHEERS study. ...[Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study that would have paid Florida parents to apply pesticides and other chemicals in the rooms primarily occupied by their infant children.]...
Not only has Johnson personally championed the pesticide industry drive to legitimize widespread human dosing work but he has also refused to require that industry studies conform with informed consent rules or safeguards for infants, pregnant women, fetuses and other vulnerable groups that apply to all medical experiments submitted to regulatory agencies such as FDA or research bodies, such as NIH.
The new rules will likely result in thousands of corporate sponsored human dosing studies each year...
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)'s
press release via truthout
~related 
@
read What Happens to Kids
~God bless President Bush and the people he's chosen to govern the greatest democracy in the world!
June 17, 2005
Sex in Games: Representing and Desiring the Virtual
No sooner is a visual medium invented than it is used for pornographic representation - videogames are no exception. This paper will chronicle the presence of pornographic imagery and depictions of sexual intercourse within videogames whilst attempting to examine the motivations for its inclusion and use.
...are ‘bodies without flesh’ achieving a representational or aesthetic status capable of evoking bodily intensities comparable to real-world encounters? Are 3-D pixel bodies able to directly hack into the central nervous system to actualize their virtual affects for erotic pleasure?"
abstract w/link to full text in MSWord format by Gareth Schott
related: 2005's GamesConference Presenters, Abstracts and Papers
thanks growing up sexually's diederik
~Is there any similarity between people who get sexually aroused by game characters and those who see Jesus in potato-chips, ufo's, big foot, ghosts, etc? The same brain chemicals, extra-chromosomes, food allergies?
The BBC Reports: USA Suspects 'Face Torture Overseas'
Steven Watt (from the American Civil Liberties Union) says it is difficult to find out how many cases of rendition there have been by the US authorities.
"Well, it's highly sensitive, but just in recent months there have been reports of some 100 to 150 individuals who have been rendered in such fashion - that's since 9/11.
"Recently in an interview on US television [Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak said 50 to 60 individuals alone had been rendered by the US to Egypt, so I think 100 to 150 is a fairly conservative estimate."
The US does not deny that terror suspects have been transferred in this way, but strongly rejects accusations that they are being tortured.
"In a post-9/11 world the United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack," said President George W Bush when challenged on the issue at a press conference in March.
Danielle Pletka is a vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank in tune with the politics of the Bush administration.
"I'm not a big fan of torture. Unfortunately, there are times in war when it is necessary to do things in a way that is absolutely and completely abhorrent to most good, decent people," she told the BBC.
"I don't want to say that the United States has engaged routinely in such practices, because I don't think that it is routine by any standard.
"But that said, if it is absolutely imperative to find something out at that moment, then it is imperative to find something out at that moment, and Club Med is not the place to do it."
~The BEEB does its rendition report.
Can private individuals be charged with a hate crime for advocating the use of torture?
Danielle Pletka (L) and one of her 'imperatives'
[images: google/ with article]
ZNose and Food Quality
('Electronic Nose')
...the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has selected (Electronic Sensor Technology, Inc.'s) zNose for the study of bug infestation in plants. In another agriculture related purchase, Enviro-Analytical, a Canadian company, selected the zNose for an investigation of quality in grain silage. press release
Breakthrough in Underground Movement Sensor
After completion of field testing at depths of 15 feet two months ago, (Malers Automation and Control Ltd.)...put significant efforts into increasing the reliability of the sensor's readings.
.. the Company is working on the next stages of development of the system, which will eventually lead to depth readings of over 80 feet.
The security system under development for the homeland security market will enable law enforcement officials and governments to detect underground activity around borders and security fences.
Fun in the Great Outdoors
skateboard park
View image View image View image View image View image
Interview: Who Loves The Sun?
Speaking with Steven Aftergood, activist against government secrecy
As the man behind (the Federation of American Scientists) Project on Government Secrecy, he has spent close to 15 years grappling with and defining the many ways the USA hides information.
-----
The Congressional Research Service has made a habit of trying to keep its "research" from the public. You've overturned that, embarrassing CRS by getting the reports through anonymous sources and backdoors, anyway.The rationale for their policy is difficult to discern. Taxpayers have already paid for CRS reports, so it's insulting on top of everything else. It's just ridiculous that we, not Congress, have to furnish them to the public.
interview (Villiage Voice) / link to secrecy news
(and archived links to Congressional Research reports)
June 16, 2005
Assessing the Terrorist Threat to Milk
A scientific paper discussing the possibility of a terrorist attack on the U.S. milk supply was scheduled for publication in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) last month until the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) intervened, calling it a "road map for terrorists," and asked the journal to withdraw the paper. In response to the HHS objections, PNAS agreed to delay publication for an indefinite period.
But some scientists who have reviewed the paper say it should be rebutted rather than censored, since it is based on a series of alarmist assumptions that are objectively unsupported.
Despite the HHS concerns, one of the paper's authors, Stanford business professor Lawrence M. Wein, went on to make his case on the New York Times op-ed page on May 30 in a piece entitled "Got Toxic Milk?"
Hundreds of thousands could die, he warned.
link via secrecy news
Not BSE ('Mad Cow Disease'), terrorist prepared botulism!
[image via google/ not above]
~Be afraid but not THAT afraid? Be afraid of manuals found on the internet not diseased cattle that slip through industry-controlled inspections?
Warning Of Revolt Against Staff "Tagging"
The union complained that the tags are also being used to monitor breaks and even trips to the lavatory, and are turning workplaces into "battery farms".
~And this in a country that has a Labour Party. Imagine the fun tagging of workers will bring to the USA. Mexico, China?
[image via google/not with above]
Overheard at Starbucks
"So the first time I got to third-base..."
-"What's 'third base'?
-"Y'think the rest of the world uses soccer euphemisms?"
"Besides SCORE!?"
-"Yeah like 'header' or 'bend it'?"
"I was seventeen years old. It was Saturday night and we were parked on a drive in a long line of dozens of other cars with their parking-lights on and couples making out.
-"Making out? Lights-on!"
"It was the first time I 'helped' a woman...girl...Judy...have an orgasm. It surprised us both."
-"Ah sweet mystery of life at last I've found you!"
"Usually before 11pm a cop car would slowly cruise the drive with it's blinking lights and that would be the signal it was time to go. But this night two guys, who might've been plain-clothes cops, Mutt and Jeff, walked up to our car. At that time Judy was fully enjoying the afterglow of this new experience, kinda hanging off my shoulder. The two men looked somewhat concerned until they got a closer look and then without cracking a smile told us the park was closing. Thinking back they were both small for cops and hadn't been driving a Ford.
The next day over the phone Judy exclaimed, then explained, how she never felt anything like that before."
-"While you racked your brains trying to remember what it was you did... what WERE you touching and when exactly did you touch it?"
"That Wednesday Judy told me about one of her older-brother's friends who happened to be visiting as she came home from school. Her brother and this friend both in their 20's belonged to a motorcycle gang, one of the more law-abiding ones. Judy was surprised at the attention this guy was showing her. She's known him for years, he's been over at the house many times but this was the first time he's said more than a few words to her. In fact he was flirting with her. She couldn't understand it."
-"More afterglow?"
Israel May Use Sound Weapon
or if you read further Israel Used Sound Weapon on Palestinans
The army employed the new device*, which it dubbed "The Scream," at a recent violent demonstration by Palestinians and Jewish sympathizers against Israel's West Bank separation barrier.
Protesters covered their ears and grabbed their heads, overcome by dizziness and nausea, after the vehicle-mounted device began sending out bursts of audible, but not loud, sound at intervals of about 10 seconds. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said that even after he covered his ears, he continued to hear the sound ringing in his head.
A military official said the device emits a special frequency that targets the inner ear. Exposure for several minutes at close range could cause auditory damage, but the noise is too intolerable for people to remain in the area for that long, he said.
Another official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because of his sensitive position, said the device hasn't been tested on subjects for hours at a time, so he couldn't discuss effects from prolonged exposure.
~*Burying the lead. I don't understand this equivocation by the AP. Isn't "Israel Uses Sound Weapon" an eye-catching headline? It's only headline worthy when and if Israel uses it on other Israelis? How chosen-people-of-god.
June 15, 2005
Revealing Chicago: An Aerial Portrait
by Terry Evans
for example Oak Street Beach
"A Collaboration Between Openlands Project and Chicago Metropolis 2020" link
~Monumental. These are stunning photos. Terry Evans' work has changed the way many people view their everyday surroundings. Compare and contrast these images with the Sierra Club/Walker Evans "sacred places" school of photography.
There are very few places in America that have not been altered by man and his ideas. (In less than 200 years for most of the USA.) We live in those scratched, cut, burned, planted, paved, graded, grazed, filled and built places.
STOP Torture Permanently Campaign
"The right to be free of torture is one of the most fundamental human rights recognized by the global community today... It is the firm position of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee that any government sponsored acts of torture under any circumstances are profoundly immoral, unjustified, and illegal. This includes any such actions by the United States. We are committed to bringing such practices to an end."
STOP Campaign
~So not all USA Christians obsequiously "render to Caesar"?
Contagious Media Showdown Awards
"Held in conjunction with the Contagious Media exhibit at New York's New Museum, the Showdown hosted websites anonymously designed for maximum spreadability, giving cash awards to top rankers. Grand Prizewinner Forget Me Not Panties...
...a faked sales site for feminist-unfriendly GPS-tracked underpants, came from behind to trump the simple and enigmatic Crying While Eating...
...a collection of user-submitted videos of people doing just that.
link to awards site / blurb excerpt Ed Halter @ NetArtNews
"Drag King" or "Faux Queen"?
and The Fluidity of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender
...the following discussion began with a query about a term to describe "women who dress up to resemble/pass for transvestites," it soon evolved into a discussion of social construction and the fluidity of sex, sexuality, and gender. Because of the unusual length of the discussion, which took place on WMST-L in July/August 2001, it has been divided into five parts.
link (WMST-L)
related:
[image via 2002 Faux Queen Pageant/ not with above list]
2004 Faux Queen Pageant photos can be seen here.
~I lived with a woman who was a "faux butch" (if there's such a term). I didn't know it at the time.
What Are You Going To Do With That?
[The following is based on the commencement address given to the graduating students of the Department of English of the University of California at Berkeley in the Hearst Greek Theatre, May 15, 2005.]
"...remember: whether you know it yet or not, you have doomed yourselves by learning how to read, learning how to question, learning how to doubt. And this is a most difficult time -- the most difficult I remember -- to have those skills. Once you have them, however, they are not easy to discard. Finding yourself forced to see the gulf between what you are told about the world, whether it's your government doing the telling, or your boss, or even your family or friends, and what you yourself can't help but understand about that world -- this is not always a welcome kind of vision to have. It can be burdensome and awkward and it won't always make you happy.
------
The reporter's question begins with an involved but perfectly well-sourced discussion of Abu Ghraib and the fact that all the reports suggest that something systematic -- something ordered by higher-ups -- was going on there. He mentions the Sanchez memo, recently released, in which the commanding general in Iraq at the time, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, approved twelve interrogation techniques that, as the reporter says, "far exceed limits established by the Army's own field manual." These include prolonged stress positions, sensory deprivation (or "hooding"), the use of dogs "to induce stress," and so on; the reporter also mentions extraordinary "rendition" (better known as kidnapping, in which people are snatched off the streets by U.S. intelligence agents and brought to third countries like Syria and Egypt to be tortured). Here's his question, and the officials' answer:
Hapless Reporter: And I wonder if you would just respond to the suggestion that there is a systematic problem rather than the kinds of individual abuses we've heard of before.
Secretary Rumsfeld: I don't believe there's been a single one of the investigations that have been conducted, which has got to be six, seven, eight or nine --
General Pace: Ten major reviews and 300 individual investigations of one kind or another.
Secretary Rumsfeld: And have you seen one that characterized it as systematic or systemic?
General Pace: No, sir.
Rumsfeld: I haven't either.
Hapless Reporter: What about-?
Rumsfeld: Question?
[Laughter]
And, as the other reporters laughed, Secretary Rumsfeld did indeed ignore the attempt to follow up, and went on to the next question."
Michael Jackson's Verdict
"The best thing to come out of the Michael Jackson verdict was the
dove woman. Brilliant."
Pressed against a chain-link fence outside the court and surrounded by a throng of screaming fans sat a cage of 10 white doves. "For each innocent verdict, I will release one,'' said fan Fariba Garmani, 44.
[Edit: And she did.]
[Edit: One wonders what she would have done if they'd announced a guilty verdict... twist the pigeon's necks and chuck 'em on the ground?] ---Jason.
thanks diederik
US Blocks Probe of Uzbekistan Slaughter
US Opposed Calls at NATO for Probe of Uzbek Killings
Officials feared losing air base access. story from the Washington Post via Truthout
~C'mon all you right-to-lifers, immorality in the media howlers, keep-marriage-sacred screamers, (and gays in the closet dungeon-masters) let's hear it for justice!?
June 14, 2005
Cops Download Nude Photos from DWI Suspect's Cell Phone, Jeopardize Case
~or if you prefer:
Woman's DWI case complicated by nude photos on cell phone)
6/09/05 - HOUSTON)/ — A roadside stop took an unusual turn when nude photos entered into it. The officers were fired, but who else saw the pictures? And will the woman they pulled over stand trial?
The woman pulled over had those pictures of herself stored on her cell phone. The officers copied them, calling them evidence.
Officer Green says he copied the photos to his PDA because he thought it was unusual and could be used as evidence later.
Officer Green also said a different HPD officer, an assistant district attorney, and HPD chemist Rick Visor saw the photos as well. On the stand, Visor said he remembered the photos being passed around a room among several police officers, but he couldn't remember their names.
via/archived at politech where a Mr. Frank Ney comments: "And why were they going through the woman's cell phone in the first place? Looking for more evidence of DWI? Or terrorism? Yeah, that's it, terrorism!
I guess the point of this is to consider that your cell phone is not
under the same legal protections as your laptop."
~Any bets all charges will be dropped (expunged!) and she'll be freed to drink and drive again? (With the understanding she will not be suing the Houston Police Dept or the individuals involved?)