Spitting Image

Overheard at Starbucks

"Are there gay gangs?"

-"What are you homophobic? Are there hetero-gangs?"

Military Recruiters Teaching High School Classes

Students as young as 14 will wear uniforms, march in drills with decommissioned guns and get schooled in military history, customs and technology.
Course materials are mostly created by the Air Force, and the classes taught by retired officers. Costs will be split between the Air Force and the school district.
Federal Way is the third King County (Washington) school district to ask the military to set up shop as part of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). Kentwood High in Covington has a program taught by the Marines; two Issaquah high schools have courses taught by the Navy.
JROTC is a fixture in schools across the South and is rapidly expanding in the North.

story

~If they're lying you're dying.

Militarism is a life-style choice. People aren't born to follow orders. You can choose to live a healthy, normal, life-affirming existence. Pray for strength and guidance.

[scientology brochure image via google/
has nothing to do with the above]

The Anti-Hunt for Osama Bin Laden

For example, according to many residents of Kabul, a convoy of al-Qaeda forces, thought to include its top leaders, made a remarkable escape [from Kabul] during one night in early November of 2001. A local businessman said:

We don't understand how they weren't all killed the night before because they came in a convoy of at least 1,000 cars and trucks. It was a very dark night, but it must have been easy for the American pilots to see the headlights. The main road was jammed from eight in the evening until three in the morning.
Thompson comments, "With all of the satellite imagery and intense focus on the Kabul area at the time, how could such a force have escaped unobserved by the US?"1 [One might also ask why the al-Qaeda fighters were so confident they could move openly, en masse, without fear of attack from the air.]
Also early in November, US intelligence agencies, having watched al-Qaeda fighters and leaders move into the area of Jalalabad, reported that bin Laden himself had arrived. According to Knight-Ridder newspapers, this is what happened next:

American intelligence analysts concluded that bin Laden and his retreating fighters were preparing to flee across the border. But the US Central Command, which was running the war, made no move to block their escape.

book excerpt/article

[image via google/ not with above]

US Forest Service: Air Quality Images

Causes of Visibility Impairment

Typical visual range in the western United States is 60 to 90 miles, or about one-half of what it would be without manmade air pollution. In the East, the typical visual range is 15 to 30 miles, or about one-third of the visual range under natural conditions.
Haze is caused by tiny particles that scatter and absorb light before it reaches an observer. As the number of particles increases, more light is absorbed and scattered, resulting in less clarity, color, and visual range.
Five types of particles contribute to haze: sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon, elemental carbon, and crustal material.

article or Introduction to Visibility pdf [Air Resource Managment]

USDA Forest Service Air Quality Images Site Map

More comparison images
from Shining Rock Wilderness (Eastern US)

~You don't need to be reminded that the images above are of relatively pristine areas. Some of these places are hundreds of miles from urban industrial centers.

My childhood memories sparkle for good reason. Visibilty everywhere has gotten shittier in just the past twenty years!

Hidden Angle

John Madden Infiltrates Fox News!

"...Fox News brought on military analyst retired Major General Bob Scales to update viewers on the War on Terror. Today's topic: The Cone of Instability

You see, Scales explains, the military is sending advisors abroad "in order to get a step ahead of some of these terror networks in the war on terror.

Scales does say that the U.S. military is operating in 58 countries

article/ diagrams and 'plays'

thanks joerg

~And I thought there was no future in military service. The American Raj!

Photo-caption Doggerel

With infinite space above
And miles upon miles of earth below,
What a narrow band life calls home.

Fun in the Great Outdoors

Distracted

NYC: MTA's Secret Film File

MTA (the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Interagency Counter Terrorism Task Force) investigators are keeping a secret database of people stopped and questioned for filming or photographing bridges and tunnels as part of the agency's efforts to thwart terror, the Daily News has learned.

... a source said those who were stopped let investigators review their film voluntarily. The source was not aware of anyone refusing.

"Most of the time they show us the images right there because they are tourists," the source said.

story via notifbutwhen

~I think since 9/11 my name has been added to more databases than mailing lists.
How many agencies like NY's MTA might be creating lists of potential suspects? Near my town you can't walk or bike near a river or canal without crossing under high-voltage power lines, over gas pipe-lines, close to locks, water and sewage treatment plants and oil and various chemical refineries.

>related:

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has spent close to $10 billion for anti-terrorism efforts since 9/11. Right now, Congress is considering the latest homeland-security appropriations bill of around $30 billion in discretionary funding. The DHS then appropriates funds to states, which in turn divide it among local governments.

As it stands, the formula is population-based, so Illinois gets more money than 45 other states.
(New York gets more money then 49 other states.~ed)

(In Illinois) the job of doling out federal homeland-security dollars belongs to the Illinois Terrorism Task Force...
According to the task-force chairman... 80 percent of the federal funds his department receives must go directly to municipal governments.
(New York might have a different arrangement with its Port Authority and other inter-borough bureaucracies~ed)

In the 2005 federal fiscal year, Illinois got $102 million, with almost half of that earmarked for Chicago and Cook County, according to their 2004 annual report.

~Should we assume part of the more than $102 million NY received from Homeland Security this year is funding a number of secret databases?

Bush Administration Files 11th Hour Papers ...

Blocking the Release of Darby CD Photos and Video Of Abu Ghraib Torture

In June, the government requested and received an extension from the judge stating that they needed time in order to redact the faces of the men, women and children believed to be shown in the photographs and videos. They were given until today to produce the images, but at the eleventh hour filed a motion to oppose the release of the photos and videos, based on an entirely new argument: they are now requesting a 7(F) exemption from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act to withhold law enforcement-related information in order to protect the physical safety of individuals. Today’s move is the latest in a series of attempts by the government to keep the images from being made public and to cover up the torture of detainees in U.S. custody around the world.

Joseph Darby was the U.S reservist who turned over the photos and videos to U.S. Army officials and touched off the Abu Ghraib scandal in April 2004.

Expectations are that the FOIA request will release more than 100 photos and 4 videos...

story / related stories [anti-imperialist league]

~It's unfortunate that the Bush Administration wasn't able to exercise the same concerns when creating the interrogation guidelines that lead to the abuse in the first place.
Children!?

Man Killed by Police in Subway Wasn't Wearing 'Bulky' Jacket

Relatives say Met admits that...Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier when challenged by armed plainclothes police...

Mr de Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at 10am last Friday after being followed from Tulse Hill. Scotland Yard initially claimed he wore a bulky jacket and jumped the barrier when police identified themselves and ordered him to stop. The same day the Met commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said the shooting was "directly linked" to the unprecedented anti-terror operation on London's streets.

The following day Sir Ian apologised...

Yesterday it emerged one armed officer involved has been given leave, and two have been moved to non-firearm duties.

The body of Mr de Menezes is being flown to Brazil tonight for a funeral tomorrow. Simultaneously, a memorial service will be held at Westminster Cathedral, with TV coverage beamed live to Brazil.

Ms Peirce (the de Menezes family's solicitor)...was astonished that the phrase "shoot to kill" was being used as if it was a legitimate legal term..

story thanks conscientious

~No mention of what happened to the other officers involved in this killing. For example who first identified Mr. Menenzes as a target, or the officer(s) that sent these three into the subway with guns drawn.

No mention of other less fatal police mistakes or inconveniences in other parts of London. Was this the only group of police chasing terrorist suspects? What are the odds of a fatal error of intelligence combined with a singular waste of police resources during such a crucial time?

>related: Shooting Officer Sent on Holiday

Matozinho Otoni da Silva, the father of the slain 27-year-old Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, shows a photograph of his son 24 July 2005(AFP/File)

Who

abu ghraib 2003

~Could this man still be in prison? Who is he? What were the names of the other naked men in those photos? The pyramids. The hooded men standing on boxes? The man on the railing? Who were they to show us what America had become?

Poem: Torture

[excerpt]

Nothing has changed. It's just that there are more people,
besides the old offenses new ones have appeared,
real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
but the howl with which the body responds to them,
was, is and ever will be a howl of innocence
according to the time-honored scale and tonality.

read the complete poem by Wislawa Szymborska

via del.icio.us/consumptive

Porn Actresses Say the Darndest Things*

"These are just goofy things I have heard from some of your favorite porn stars, I have also said several of them myself!"

for example...

"If they beat you up but don't pay you it's rape."

"By the time the third drug dealer has shown up and left your set you know the shoot is not going to go well."

more quotes WARNING: 18 and OVER [Kamiland]

via *Maledicta #13

Kami Andrews

Cellular Phones As Sexual Objects and Human Implosion

A girlfriend of mine recently told me that when she sees her boyfriend's phone number on her phone's caller ID window, she has an instantaneous sexual response.

article by Emily Lacy

~Hello Kitty.

Objects functioning as emotional and physiological triggers. Non-synaesthetic 'hyper-binding? (See Emrich's article in the entry below. I know a guy who can't hold glossy magazines without an instantaneous sexual response. And a woman who can't climb into the back seat of a car without blushing.

>NOT related (perhaps related to the mythology of cell phones)

A man leaps to his death from a fire and smoke filled Tower One of the World Trade Center September 11, 2001 in New York City after terrorists crashed two hijacked passenger planes into the twin towers.

It appears the man may have been talking on his cell phone as he fell. link

Synaesthesia Experts Richard Cytowic & Hinderk Emrich

"The most common form of synaesthesia is colored letters and numbers. That is, joining color to integers. That accounts for about two-thirds of cases. The next big group would be sight and sound synaesthesia, or what is called colored hearing. In this, voices, music, environmental sounds will make people see colored photisms—these are shapes that arise, they change and metamorphose a little bit and fade away.

Synaesthesia isn’t something that you do, it is something that happens to you.

...there is a continuum from synaesthesia to metaphor to language...a lot of people now believe that metaphor is an emergent property of mind... That continuum suggests that synaesthesia is not a high-level, abstract, linguistically-based metaphor—that’s a loud tie, she’s a sweet person, etc—but it is more at the perceptual end of the continuum. And so if it was not for synaesthesia, we probably would not have language."

articles

Automated 'Virtual Commentator' for Video Content

"...can generate, automatically, textual descriptions of moving image streams. This video-to-text conversion system evaluates certain key image cues, translates those cues into conceptual descriptions and from there into natural language descriptions of video sequences.

press release COGVISYS [Cognitive Vision Systems]

~SUBJECT HAS FALLEN/ CANT GET UP.

Internet TV: PCF

Anyone will be able to broadcast full-screen video to thousands of people at virtually no cost, using BitTorrent technology. Viewers get intuitive, elegant software to subscribe to channels, watch video, and organize their video library. The project is non-profit, open source, and built on open standards.

"We're working to cover both sides of the TV"

link [Participatory Culture.org]

Iraq: Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial System (V-MADS)

Active Denial Technology is a breakthrough non-lethal technology that uses millimeter-wave electromagnetic energy to stop, deter and turn back an advancing adversary from relatively long range.

In July 2005 it was reported that the Active Denial System would be deployed to Iraq before the end of the year. Under an initiative called Project Sheriff, troops will receive a total of 15 vehicles.

Active Denial Technology uses a transmitter to send a narrow beam of 95-GHz millimeter waves towards an identified subject. Traveling at the speed of light, the energy reaches the subject and penetrates less than 1/64 of an inch into the skin, quickly heating up the skin's surface...According to reports, a 2-second burst from the system can heat the skin to a temperature of 130° F. At 50 °C, the pain reflex makes people pull away automatically in less than a second. Someone would have to stay in the beam for 250 seconds before it burnt the skin,

Despite the sensation, the technology does not cause injury because of the low energy levels used. It exploits a natural defense mechanism that helps to protect the human body from damage.

press release via Wendy McElroy

~This weapon's designed to cause crowds to stampede. Turning the 'foot-power' of a crowd upon itself. No burn injuries, only broken and crushed bones and bodies. Diabolical isn't it?

>related:

In this video clip, the test set-up is shown, with the transmit antenna slowing moving from side to side. The camera then pans to the left and toward targets located in to the distance. The camera then shows a close up of several "cutout" targets in the shape of people. The video changes to infrared, showing the targets from the heat they emit. Two of the targets quickly glow white as the Active Denial, millimeter wave energy strikes them and their temperature is altered.

galley link [The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Directed Energy Directorate]

[image via google]

Pictures of Green Flashes

for example...

the infamous green flash

more links to pictures/ text

~Won't the existence of photoshop/etc. put into question all future documentation of this phenomena?

"RESPECT MY AUTHORITY!!"

link through here

~The flash above crashed my computer, but so does opening more than one photo-file at a time. (Caveat anyway.)

Martial Arts Trickz

>for example

picture gallery/ user pictures

thanks diederik

Cheney Lobbying Against Anti-Torture Legislation

White House Aims to Block Legislation on Detainees

The Bush administration has been lobbying to block legislation that would bar the US military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual.

story [wash.post] via/archived truthout

>related: From the Congressional Record

...amendment (no. 1557) to the Defense Authorization Act...to establish uniform standards for the interrogation of detainees held by the U.S. military.

The record of the July 25 floor debate, including the declassified memoranda presented by Sen. Graham, may be found here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2005_cr/s072505.html

The Bush Administration said it "strongly opposes" this and related amendments that would regulate the detention of suspected terrorists.

"If legislation is presented that would restrict the President's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice, the President's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," the White House said in a July 21 statement on the Senate bill.

secrecy news

~Simply put Cheney and the Bush Administration do not want interrogations of detainees in DOD custody to conform to the U.S. Army's Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation. These lawmakers are not attempting to reinvent the wheel (or should I say rack?) with this amendment. But the President's advisers have a better understanding of interrogation techniques than the US Army?

Ancient Phallus Unearthed in Cave

"...among the earliest representations of male sexuality ever.

Its life size suggests it may well have been used as a sex aid by its Ice Age makers, scientists report.

It may also have been used to knap, or split, flints

press release [BBC] via Aberrant News

~'Ancient dildo' is one of the pet names my wife has for me since I got that prescription filled.

Does a Sexual Offender Live in Your Neighborhood?

The National Alert Registry nationwide database of nearly 500,000 registered sex offenders can be searched instantly. You can get detailed information about offenders in your area including names, aliases, maps, photos, addresses, and offenses.

Free search for sex offenders in your area:

http://www.nationalalertregistry.com/

thanks diederik

~I didn't understand why they need my e-mail address to perform a free search. So I didn't try it.

While doing a google image search with "sexual offender" I saw a photo of my one of my highschool English teachers. ...No really. (It could've been.)

[illus. via google/ NOT the above]

Overheard at Starbucks

"Torture is the response of a real man to real security situations. Democracy and our namby-pamby laws have made us weak.
If we're not willing to match darkness with darkness how important can our security, our place in history, our standards of living be, Muffy?"

-"I wonder if any of the tortured realize what a valuable service they provide?"

Fun in the Great Outdoors

this green world

BIOMETRIC ACCESS CONTROL AT US BASES IN IRAQ

In an effort to improve security at U.S. bases in Iraq, the Department of Defense has issued a new policy requiring the collection of various biometric data from non-U.S. persons who seek access to U.S. facilities there.
"USCENTCOM personnel will collect biometrics, biographic, and other identifying information from non-screened, non-U.S. persons requesting access to U.S. bases and installations in Iraq"...
"At a minimum, fingerprints, facial photos, and iris scans will be collected."
"Data collected under this policy will be stored indefinitely in support of the War on Terrorism." (i.e. "Global Struggle Against Extremism" ~ed.)

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/biometric.pdf

via secrecy news

~If various body parts of mine are not periodically scanned, I get cranky. I feel invisible.

>related: Has anyone else noted that Veteran Administration hospitals are photographing the drivers (and license plates?) of every vehicle that enters their gates?

Studies: Iraq Suicide Bombers Inspired by Invasion not Al Qaeda

Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq War radicalized most, probes find

"...interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.

A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, ''the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."

story By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe

Photo-Caption Non Sequitur

In this reproduction from TV O Globo, Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, center, is seen in this undated photo with relatives. Menezes, 27, was shot and killed, Friday, July 22, 2005, in London, at the Stockwell subway station. Friday's shooting before horrified commuters prompted criticism of police for overreacting and expressions of fear that Asians and Muslims would be targeted by a 'trigger-happy culture'...(AP Photo/O Globo, TV O Globo) @ [yahoo]

~OK. Mr. Menezes might've been a Brazilian and a Muslim but I'm guessing the British police would've made sure the press was aware of that.

Thimerosal Cover-up in the Media

"...The New York Times reported an "unusual" invitation-only press conference in which representatives of the three federal agencies involved in the cover-up, CDC and FDA and the National Institute of Child Health Development, defended the use of thimerosal in vaccines.

Although thimerosal is now discontinued in most American vaccines, it is still being administered to millions of children in the developing world with the help of American tax dollars. The public attempts by federal regulators to exonerate thimerosal will help ensure that this practice continues.

story by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

~When celebrities talk, I listen. Seeing John Stewarts name was the only reason I read this story.
Am I becoming like the majority of Americans who are unable to recognize the harmful or criminal actions of corporations or governments unless a favored celebrity or politician first points them out?
(Uninspired observation/curse by Stewart by the way.)

>related: Thimerosal Immunity to Pork

Critics may gripe about whether the new Homeland Security Act fights terrorism well, but no one can say it doesn't do a great job of protecting drug companies from autistic children.
A short provision at the end of the act, added quietly just days before its passage, exempts Eli Lilly and other firms from direct civil litigation over whether vaccine additives cause autism. Parents suing on behalf of their autistic children are shunted to a federal "vaccine court," where damages are capped. Conveniently, in late November 2002 the Justice Department also requested that the court seal documents relating to hundreds of the lawsuits, complicating the cases for plaintiffs...

EDITORIAL [Scientific American Feb03]

LoveMarks

Who Do You Love

Lovemarks are a new way of thinking about the things we love. Lovemarks are better than brands, because they are about Love and Respect: they speak to us as thinking and feeling human beings. Lovemarks embody Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy.

Are you dotty about your iPod? Mad about your Moleskine? Tell us why you're crazy about a Lovemark, or nominate a new Lovemark. See what's hot in the world of Lovemarks right now by viewing the latest nominations and stories at Lovemarks LIVE, or dive into the whole Lovemark list.

Meet other Inspirational Consumers in our Lovemark Community, or share your ideas about the Lovemarks concept...

link

~Marketing zombies working to fill the vacuousness of consumerism with platitudes. Consumer Reports gets religion; the cargo cults (sic) come full-circle.
Get a pet. Volunteer for a charity. Get two pets. Take lots of walks outdoors. Search for something living to admire. Please.

Victoria's Pro-Ana Journal

My name is Victoria. I built this site orginally to return to ana. I have been ana off and on since I was 11. Things got pretty bad in high school. I didn't get my period for almost a year and my hair was falling out. I eventually stopped ana and got back to a normal size. Then when I was close to 20 my doctor put me on some medication that caused me to gain weight. Instead of returning to ana I went to the other extreme and became a compulsive overeater. Then when I was 22 I decided to return to ana and built this website as a thinspiration. I am 23 now and have lost alot of weight since returning to ana. However my hair is thinning out again and I'm afraid I might affect my body's ability to bear children if I continue. I still want to lose alot more weight and get down to a BMI of 17 but I would like to do it slowly in a normal fashion by eating properly and exercising. I am going to leave this site up because I believe ana is a choice...

DISCLAIMER: This is a Pro-Ana/Pro-ED website. If you do not have an eating disorder and/or are not Pro-ED, please leave now. This site is built for those of us with existing eating disorders who are accepting of our EDs and not yet willing to recover. If you are recovering from an ED, please leave now as there may be photos or text that may be considered triggering. If you are looking to lose weight and do not currently have an ED, please leave now. I suggest that you lose weight safely with a balanced diet and exercise program, this is not the lifestyle you want. I will not be held responsible for the actions taken after viewing this site.

index

other thinspiration i.e. photos of skinny female celebrities

British Police Admit to Killing Wrong Man in Subway

Plainclothes police chased the man into an underground train station on Friday after he ignored warnings to stop. As the man boarded a train, police shot him five times at point-blank range fearing he was about to set off a bomb.

"We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday 21st July 2005," police said on Saturday.

The killing in front of shocked passengers on a packed underground train triggered speculation that traditionally unarmed British police had adopted a shoot-to-kill policy.

Mayor Ken Livingstone said the duty of the police was to protect the public against people considered to be terrorist suspects, and police said they had followed the man they shot from a house under surveillance and who had run when challenged.

Analysts said police were operating under secret new guidelines, codenamed Operation Kratos, allowing them to aim for the head if they believe there was a threat to the public.
"Simple nervous system shut-down, that is the objective," said anti-terrorism expert Robert Ayers of the Royal Institute of International Affairs think-tank told Reuters.

Witnesses told of plain-clothes police pursuing a suspect on to a subway train carriage. He slipped as he ran and then was repeatedly shot at point-blank range as he lay on the floor.

London's police chief Ian Blair said on Friday his force faced "the greatest operational challenge" in its history.*

story

~*An 'A' for effort but barely passing in execution(s)?

An e-mail friend reminds us: "Accidents will happen, when cops are instructed to kill first, ask questions later."

(Cieciel again) So Al Qaeda has forced Blair to adopt American-style policing? USA cops accidentally kill innocent people or 'suspects' so often that it's no longer shocking. I wonder how long it will take until the British press plays-down these accidents just like their American counterparts? The Brits are fast learners.

Expert Questions Existence of Woodpecker

Jerome A. Jackson, a zoologist at Florida Gulf Coast University, is challenging a blurry video cited by other scientists as showing a clip of one bird, saying the four-second image does "no more than suggest the possibility" that the bird still exists.

Since the woodpecker's discovery, federal agencies have promised millions to help preserve the bird's eastern Arkansas habitat in and around the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge.

story

>related (below) "Extinct" Woodpecker Sighted

~It wouldn't be the first time the feds have redistributed millions, or even billions, of tax dollars for something that doesn't exist or wasn't there. Missile defense technology and Iraq's WMDs come immediately to mind.

Nukes in the News: Djibouti Ratifies Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Djibouti has deposited its instrument of ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) with the United Nations Secretary-General on 15 July 2005, bringing the total number of ratifications to 122.

The United States is not among the ratifiers.

via secrecy news

~You get the feeling when the Bushies start testing their new nuclear weapon systems and upgrades in the next few years, there will be international protests if they try using the old Cold War test sites in the Pacific? Looks like Vegas' property values and patriotic Mormon down-winders in Utah will be taking the hits for continued American nuclear readiness into the next century.

Abstracts: "Sex Object: Desire and Design in a Gendered World"

>for example

Watkins,H., 'Frigidaires and Frigid Love: the Fetish and the
Fridge'

"I'm curious about what domestic technologies do and what they mean. Intrigued by the intimacy and affection with which many people relate to mundane objects and appliances, I argue for the need to better understand how we use, interact and cohabit with our things; how we 'fall in love' and engage emotionally with objects and machines. I consider how the refrigerator, as a product of thermodynamic technology, has become domesticated, aestheticised and turned into an object of desire.
My research starts to sketch out the complex 'social life' of the domestic refrigerator and I suggest that focusing on a household appliance can be a valuable way to put analyses of space, technology, design, gender, embodiment and everyday practice up against each other. Wrapped up in a complex web of food and familial love, care and preservation, temptation and consumption, style and status, household communication and display -and variously positioned as tool, gadget, servant, storage space, 'family friend' and fashion statement -the domestic refrigerator becomes gendered, sexualised, fetishised and morally coded.
This paper draws on household and company interviews, research in The Science Museum's domestic technology collection and stories from self- professed 'appliance fetishists' in an online discussion group.
I consider the refrigerator in relation to gendered practices of production, consumption, preservation and disposal; the feminisation of domestic space, emotional labour and discourses of 'care'; and contradictory constructions of masculinity around an object that is simultaneously 'technological'and 'domestic'."

(50 of 52) http://www.nsad.ac.uk/news/pdfs/dhs_abstracts.pdf

via growing up sexually

~I sometimes feel, when listening to someone praise this or that consumer item they desire or have recently purchased, that people are finding uses and meanings in products and appliances that would never occur to me. That I can't understand. That I might be congenitially unable to comprehend.
It's like they have, they've been given, in addition to either male or female objects of desire, a whole other sex-world of innumerable consumer objects to desire. They possess a love that speaks a brand name. And I'm a one-sexed guy in a multi-sexed world.

The Frigidaire Girl. 1927 via @/ not with abstracts

Kissing the 4th Amendment Goodbye

"Congress will vote to renew and possibly expand PATRIOT today, tomorrow or early next week. ...

If Congress renews or expands Section 215, as they seem intent on doing, you can kiss the 4th Amendment good-bye . . . What two World Wars and a Civil War could not accomplish, al-Qaeda and the cowardly leadership of George Bush will.

This is probably a good time to remind people what Section 215 gives the government the power to do:

>for example:

Order any person or entity to turn over "any tangible things," so long as the FBI specifies that the order is part of an authorized terrorism or intelligence investigation.

Obtain personal data, including medical records, without any specific facts connecting those records to a foreign terrorist.

Prohibit doctors and insurance companies from disclosing to their patients that their medical records have been seized by the government.

more [Whiskey Bar]

~And if there's any doubt...

New York Police begin random searches of commuters' bags

"...in the aftermath of a second set of London bombings and planned to extend the practice to buses, airport trains and suburban commuter lines.
Riders on the nation's largest subway system waited patiently while officers at various stations around the city combed through their briefcases and knapsacks on the first day of what Mayor Michael Bloomberg said would be a practice that would go on indefinitely.

story

[larger image via norulak/ NOT Whiskey Bar]

Movies: DVBlog

"Launched on June 27th, Doron Golan's DVBlog presents a wide range of web-based cinema--artist projects, historic pieces and even relevant tutorials--indexed by categories such as "satire," "documentary odd" or "ephemera." A loose group of artists, among them Lew Baldwin, Yoshi Sodeoka, Tim Whidden and Golan, curate the site, straddling time and genre quite freely. The only stipulation is that the works be in Quicktime, a platform whose architecture Golan describes as "superior." To date, selections have included "Spamalogue" by Ze Frank, in which the humorist enacts a spam email message from an alleged government official who pleads for huge sums of money to be channeled quickly into his bank account, also seminal net cinema pieces like "Little Movies 2" by Lev Manovich and short videos by artists such as Scott Hessels and Peter Horvath. With so much cinematic variation, watching movies on the DVBlog is like skipping theaters in a multiplex--with no risk attached. At the same time, as each day passes, the bloggers are building a rich archive that distills salient concepts as well as fleeting ideas or attempts involved in this emerging form."  Lauren Cornell

[Rhizome]

http://www.the9th.com/DVblog/

Goodbye Bandar, Hello Turki

"...the tale of how U.S. policy in the last phase of the Cold War relied on the Saudi connection, Pakistan, and militant Islam to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. ...Steve Coll's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Ghost Wars, is a masterful account that tell us all we need to know. I interviewed Coll for Conversations in March 2005 link Read the interview and then the book. Also see the Conversations with History Research Gallery on Militancy and Moderation in Islam link especially the interview with Ahmed Rashid at link

blog [Conversations With History]

~From blowback to blow up. (Watch the videos or click on the titles to access the transcripts.)

Video: Conversations With History

UCTVs link RealPlayer required/
or click on the highlighted name to read the transcript(!)

>See also Conversations With History Research Gallery

Makin' Conversation

[more via the fabricattic.com/ NOT UCTV]

House Votes to Support Guantanamo

...the American House of Representatives on Wednesday formally expressed its support for the detention of presumed terrorists on the Guantánamo base. An amendment to the proposed foreign affairs budget, adopted by 304 votes to 124 with two abstentions, emphasizes notably that "the detention and legal and humane interrogations of detainees by American (authorities) are essential to the defense of the United States and its coalition partners" united in the "war against terrorism."

"It is always beneficial to keep criminals off our streets," stressed Republican Dana Rohrabacher in support of his amendment, deeming that the prison camp at Guantánamo "does good work."

story

~It's too late anyway. There's nothing our leaders can do now to prevent the next terrorist attacks inside the US. Let Congress impress their racist constituents with tough talk and support of brutality. If American military bases on Saudi soil inspired the targeting of the World Trade Center, our invasion and occupation of Iraq has given the terrorists fuel for a century-worth of fires.

State Police Getting Anti-Terrorism Night-Vision Goggles

...the Low Profile Night Vision Goggles (LPNVG)... will be used by highly trained officers with the Michigan State Police's Emergency Support Team (similar to S.W.A.T.). This deployment represents a growing trend among law enforcement agencies to adjust strategies and implement counter-terrorism capabilities as a result of Department of Homeland Security initiatives and federal funding.

STS's (Sensor Technology Systems) LPNVG is the only production night vision goggle with an integrated Heads-Up Display capability, which allows video and other sensory signals, such as GPS data or the output of a thermal scope, to be presented directly into the operator's night vision scene.

press release

~Night vision, combined with thermal imaging and GPS to counter terrorism. No mention of how much these goggles cost; how often they might be used or if they would be purchased by the state if federal funds were not available.
I'm guessing officers will be flying over Michigan's vast rural areas at night scoping-out what's cooking? The militia's meth-labs will soon be a thing of the past.

It's Always Lethal

link

~"It's an honor and pleasure."

[more photos of 2001-02 Afghan victims of unnamed, unmemorialized American munitions]

~Who knew sentimentality could be brutal?

What Is It...

..about this actress's recent cult conversion that made her interesting? I've had dreams about her since reading this Salon article. I've seen her star in the forgettable Abandon. Liked her a little better in Go where she was just a shadow in Sarah Polley's presence. In the four or five movies I've seen of hers, she's proven herself more attractive than talented.
Now it seems her imminent zombification has connected with my psyche in ways I don't wish to explore.
A rescuer of damsels in distress? A beard-snatcher? A cult-deprogrammer, me?
I got your deprogramming right her, Sweetheart! Not my most welcomed insight.

Trendblog

"...covering the growing marketing and media landscape surrounding blogs, blogvertising and podcasting."

marketing category via CScout

~"Your hand-held devices are important to us."

Conference: Urban Screens 2005

DISCOVERING THE POTENTIAL OF OUTDOOR SCREENS FOR URBAN SOCIETY

"URBAN SCREENS 2005 is an international conference ranging from critical theory to project experiences by researchers and practitioners in the field of Art, Architecture, Urban Studies and Digital Culture. It addresses the growing infrastructure of large digital moving displays, that increasingly influence the visual sphere of our public spaces. It will investigate how the currently dominating commercial use of these screens can be broadened and culturally curated. Can these screens become a tool to contribute to a lively urban society, involving its audience interactively?"

link via Rhizome Art News

~Commercial domination broadening into cultural 'curation' (sic)...sounds like a natural progression, like community public access granted by cable tv providers?

video display screen at Disney-MGM Studios via Mouse Planet

~The vast majority of jumbotrons are on private property.

The Evolution of Frankenfoods

"In the debate over genetically modified organisms (GMO), the biotech industry claimed that their products were novel enough to warrant a patent but not so new and different to require a label or a special set of regulations. It might be more difficult for the nanotech industry to rely on similar arguments of "substantial equivalence." After all, what makes nanotech so potentially revolutionary is that materials often have very different properties at the nano-scale.

The number of scientific studies that raise troubling questions about nanotech is increasing. Neither voluntary nor enforceable regulations are in effect."

article by John Feffer (scroll down)

~"Smart dust" for farms and battlefields, atomically modified rice, "Spray(s) for Life", interactive foods: Golly, Mister Science, can this magic technology happen without poisoning people in unique ways? ('Poison' or 'poisoning' does not appear in this rather green article. 'Toxic' appears once.)

Overheard at Starbucks

"Are the police permitted to pay informants with drugs? Pot, meth, coke, heroin, crack?"

-"Yeah but they keep the best stuff for themselves."

"Could there be places where the only illegal drugs in circulation are those put there through cop-snitch transactions?"

-"Since 9/11 there's a lot more federal money around."

"Like the multi-generation crime-families in the "Godfather" are there now 'informant-families'?"

"Are there towns where informants with cops' help have cornered the illegal drug, stolen goods, sports-betting, hooker businesses?

-"You can't fight city-hall."

"I wonder if kiddie-porn informants get the same 'respect' as the other informants?"

-"Pre-internet kiddie-pornographers?"

zNose(R) and Subway Security

HomelandSecurityStocks.com: Electronic Sensor zNose Offers Solutions as Homeland Czar Chertoff calls for Better Subway Security to Detect Terrorist Threats

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff... has made it a top priority to install "technology to detect explosives and biological, chemical or radioactive material on rail, subway and bus systems."

In fixed installations such as a subway platform, tunnel or station, the zNose(R) establishes a base line environmental "odor profile" of the location and can then detect and identify potentially dangerous deviations from the base line in as little as 10 seconds with part per trillion sensitivity. As a complementary technology the zNose(R) can also be added to walk through devices such as metal detectors or turnstiles to screen individuals for explosives, chemical materials and illegal contraband at transit facility entry points.

press release

~Won't this be amazing if it works? But then wouldn't ZNose alarms become the signals for suicide-bombers to detonate?

[illus. via google/not link]

Body Builder

url thanks diederik

~I can remember when 'freak' meant a person who was mentally or physically disabled by some cruel trick of nature. Or someone accidentally affected by bad drugs or an unusual libido.
Not someone purportedly on the other end of the 'health spectrum' created by their own diligence and design.

You think he gets light-headed when he pumps-up like that?
I get giddy when I've an erection.

Saudis Allowed to Fund Al Qaeda

The United States has determined that Saudi Arabia continues to allow citizens to finance Al Qaida, including its insurgency campaign in Iraq.

U.S. officials said that despite numerous appeals the Saudi kingdom has not arrested financiers of Al Qaida or related groups. They said the kingdom has also failed to freeze the assets of leading Saudi financiers of Islamic insurgency groups.

"Wealthy Saudi financiers and charities have funded terrorist organizations and causes that support terrorism and the ideology that fuels the terrorists' agenda," Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said. "Even today, we believe that Saudi donors may still be a significant source of terrorist financing, including for the insurgency in Iraq."

It was the first time a senior Bush administration official asserted that Saudi nationals have been financing the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Over the last two years, the Bush administration has blamed Syria for the flow of insurgents and funding into Iraq.

item

~Check the date for this story on the url!

American citizens are being arrested and having their homes confiscated for donating, wittingly or unwittingly, to charities that also front terrorist activities, yet the Bush Adminstration has done little to stop this direct source of terrorist funding.

>To access more free but abridged unique Middle East Newsline items: Search google news with "middle east newsline"; then scroll down to the bottom of page two (the last page) and click on the red
repeat the search with omitted results included.

Neurological Syndromes

for example:

Kluver-Bucy Syndrome

Classically, the person will try to put anything to hand into their mouths and typically attempt to have sexual intercourse with it... Effectively, it is the "what" pathway that is damaged with regards to foodstuff and sexual partner. As Ramachandran puts it, "they are not hypersexual, just indiscriminate. They [monkeys with surgically modified temporal lobes] have great difficulty in knowing what prey is, what a mate is, what food is and in general what the significance of any object might be."

link
[Four syndromes noted with external links with more info. for three]

~"Eat, fuck, kill." Isn't that the 'message' of most tv commericials? The more effective ones?

[image via google/ NOT with above links]

Study Says Ethanol Not Worth the Energy

...it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm weather perennial grass found in the Great Plains and eastern North America United States, it takes 45 percent more energy and for wood, 57 percent.
It takes 27 percent more energy to turn soybeans into biodiesel fuel and more than double the energy produced is needed to do the same to sunflower plants, the study found.
"Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment," according to the study by Cornell's David Pimentel and Berkeley's Tad Patzek. They conclude the country would be better off investing in solar, wind and hydrogen energy.
The researchers included such factors as the energy used in producing the crop, costs that were not used in other studies that supported ethanol production, said Pimentel.
The study also omitted $3 billion in state and federal government subsidies that go toward ethanol production in the United States each year, payments that mask the true costs, Pimentel said.
Ethanol is an additive blended with gasoline to reduce auto emissions and increase gas' octane levels. Its use has grown rapidly since 2004, when the federal government banned the use of the additive MTBE...

story By Mark Johnson Associated Press Writer

>related:

"Corn is already American’s most heavily subsidized crop, sucking up about $10 billion a year (according to OXFAM) along with all that water and fertilizer. About 13 percent of the corn crop is now devoted to ethanol production, but that would increase dramatically if the Energy Policy Act of 2005, now in a House-Senate conference committee, were to pass. The Senate version of the energy bill would require US ethanol production to more than double - from 3.3 billion gallons in 2004 to 8 billion gallons by 2012.

The Tragic Abuse of Corn

[cartoon via melbourne indymedia/ not above story]

Iraq: No This Certainly Is Not Switzerland

On the way out of Camp Lima Base were two latrines, one marked "Iraqis Only" and the other "No Iraqis -- Americans Only". Asked for an explanation, Major Booth replied that this was due to 'cultural differences'.

story by Trish Schuh via xymphora [July 17]

"old times there are not forgotten..."

[image via google/ not with above]

SurLaLune Fairy Tale Illustration Gallery

~for example

the emperor's new clothes @

index of illustrators, fairy tales

via the surlalune fairy tales pages

FBI Builds Huge File on Antiwar, Rights Groups

story
By Eric Lichtblau The New York Times via/archived truthout

~Groups like ACLU and Greenpeace are troubled by their large FBI files. No mention in this story if individuals not affliated with tax-exempt organizations are also being targeted by the FBIs "political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities".

>related? my comments at Code Pinks Anti-Recuitment Campaign post

[illus. via galactic central bibliographies/
not the NY Times story or the Code Pink post]

Book: Women Artists Working in New Media

Edited by Judy Malloy
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003 (Leonardo Series)

blurbage with links to contributors' bios;
and on the left find (some) new? works and classic web works

for example

Latitudes (1996) by Molissa Fenley

British Council's Favourite Words

Mother's the Word

The wordlist...emerged after the council asked more than 7,000 learners in 46 countries what they considered the most beautiful words in English language (sic).

story/list thanks james

~Where's 'yes'? (What's a 'hen night'?)

Net Art: "The Company Therapist" (1996)

from the Anonymous Faxer's Transcripts...

more transcripts from the Anonymous Faxer

"First time visitors to this site can start with Dr. Balis' Personal Diary & Notes, but are encouraged to explore. Below is a list of the patients and both their first and most recent sessions with the Doctor. Click on the patient's name to go to their file which has links to all the material on that patient, or click on the session date to go directly there.
Over the three years of its run, readers were encouraged to become writers and create their own patients and associated therapy sessions. To learn how it worked, go Backstage."

link to intro/ list of patients

http://www.thetherapist.com/index.html

Iraq War Fatalities

[Coalition fatalities]

animation

Photography: Terra Galleria

for example...

Yucca and El Capitan, early morning. Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas, USA @

link to 12, 000 photos by Q.T. Luong

via incoming signals

~Why bother going to any of these places? They'll never look as good as these photographs. Nature porn.

Overheard at Starbucks

"Imagine what the Masons, the Mafia, the Klan
...whoever it is that organized crime around here...
would be up to,
if there wasn't illegal gambling, prostitution and drugs?"

-"Don't forget the Mormons."

"Without their incredibly lucrative victimless crimes keeping them fat and busy, what would the thugs find worthy of thugging?"

-"Yeah. They'ld probably force property-owners into buying useless protection for homes, furnishings and vehicles...
They'ld get control of the utilities: gas, oil, phone, electricity, water and garbage. Setting prices and adding surcharges at will...
Prescription drugs would be grossly overpriced with organized crime-enforced profiteering of everyone's misery...
Even our sons and daughters would be required to fight their battles and be taken from us for their members' private use."

"Lucky us."

-"You betcha."

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism

"People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.

>If you were to break down causal factors, how much weight would you put on a cultural rejection of the West and how much weight on the presence of American troops on Muslim territory?

RP: The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism.

interview with Robert Pape author of "Dying to Win"

~When did our leaders (in both parties) decide that the profits from oil and armaments were worth the societal trauma and the lives lost to suicide bombers?

When they talk to us about Muslim extremists, should we be listening?

suicide-bomber barbie
[via google/Not with above]

Up to 5.1 Million Uncounted Unemployed

A study out of the Boston Federal Reserve argues current unemployment numbers are out of wack and undercounting millions of the unemployed. As one story summarizes the report:

Labor force participation rates "have not recovered as much as usual and the discrepancies are large," [the author of the study] wrote. "Current low rates of labor market participation thus potentially represent considerable slack in the U.S. labor market"...While the official unemployment rate has fallen from a peak of 6.3% in June 2003 to 5% in June 2005, the labor force participation rate remains close to 15-year lows of 66%.

story with links THANKS joerg

~J. notes: "This is no news for lots of Europeans. One reason why unemployment is so high in Germany and France is that those countries are way more generous with who they consider to be unemployed. One of Thatcher's first tricks to reduce unemployment was to change the way the statistics were compiled. A study I saw the other day concluded that the US' unemployment rate was the same as that of the German states which were part of West Germany - IF (and only if) you apply the exact same criteria and definitions on who you count as unemployed..."

~[Cieciel] Europe has higher rates of unemployment then the USA and America has lower rates of 'labor market participation' then Europe. So we still win?

[illus. via Atom Grid / not the Boston Fed]

We Don't Do That Here

Holy Fem-bot, Batman!

Katie Holmes is turning into a zombie in front of our eyes. Pass the popcorn.

In her interview with W's Robert Haskell, the 26-year-old Holmes -- a television star who's been speaking competently to the press for almost a decade now -- comes off as nothing less than a chilling fem-bot...

"I've found the man of my dreams," "I've never met anyone like Tom," "Tom is the most incredible man in the world," "Meeting Tom -- I'm just exhilarated. He makes me laugh, we have fun, we understand each other, everything is so aligned. I feel so lucky and so -- like I've been given such a gift ... And it's just really amazing." These are Holmes' non sequitur replies to Haskell's questions about everything and anything, including her recently dissolved five-year relationship with ex-fiancé Chris Klein.

It's profoundly sad that Holmes seems not just to have drunk the Kool-Aid, but to be wearing the pitcher it was stirred in over her head. But it's just as sad that because we are celebrity imbibers first and human beings second, we can't bring ourselves to politely look the other way as she stumbles around.

It's tough to make the American public choke on a Hollywood-manufactured story...

google-cached article By Rebecca Traister [salon]

thanks conscientious joerg

>RELATED: Two Top Guns Shoot Blanks

[image google]

Photo-caption Non Sequitur

By the rivers of Babylon
There we sat down.
And there we wept
When we remembered Zion.

For the wicked, carried us away
Captivity, required of us a song.
How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

[image google/ caption robbyredlocks]

Captivity Conference

Captivity From Babylon to Guantánamo Bay

A two-day conference at University College London,
10-11 November 2005

The term 'captivity' describes a wide variety of different phenomena. It might refer to the treatment of prisoners of war or to hostage taking as a political pool; to slavery and other forced-labour systems; to ideas of liberty and concepts of gender. By discussing 'captivity' from different historical and theoretical angles, we will explore its usefulness as a conceptual tool...

link thanks diederik

[image via google/ not from link]

The Birth of the London Bomb Official Story

"With so many known video cameras in London, why wouldn't they take care not to be seen together? They could have entered London separately if they did not want to be identified as part of a 'cell', and avoid giving the police information (IDs) that could be used to trace their colleagues. As is often the case with these stories, we are asked to believe that they would be technically proficient ('military grade' explosives), but make the dumbest small mistakes.

article/comments xymphora

~Target: Londonistan

[image google/ not with above]

Nukes in the News: Senate Funds Bunker-busters

updates/info/take action

via WAND (Woman's Action for New Directions)

related: New Improved Bunker Buster Is In Development

Lockheed Martin hopes the supercavitating bombs will reach 10 times the depth of the current U.S. Air Force record holder, the huge BLU-113 bunker buster that can break through nearly 25 feet (7 meters) of concrete or nearly 100 feet (30 meters) of earth.

Lockheed Martin said it expects four prototype weapons to be ready for testing later this year.

press release [science daily July 13]

~You get the feeling that the USA will never give up nuclear weapons?

Website: PublicEye.org

"Political Research Associates (PRA) is an independent, nonprofit, progressive research center for activists defending democracy, building equality, and challenging bigotry and oppression promoted by sectors of the Political Right."

index/ infoblog

[Neonazi & Klan Rallies in Chicago 1978 @]

more photos/ slide shows/ power point in PRA's gallery

Abu Ghraib Tactics Were First Used at Guantánamo

...according to a newly released military investigation that shows the tactics were employed there months before military police used them on detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Military investigators who briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday on the three-month probe, called the tactics "creative" and "aggressive" but said they did not cross the line into torture.

"Reasonable people always suspected these techniques weren't invented in the backwoods of West Virginia," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch.

story [wash.post] via/archived: truthout

[abu ghraib image via google/ not with story]

Nukes in the News: SimNuke

60 Years of Nuclear Weapons on Earth

A three-part memorial and reaction to 60 years of the Atomic Age

http://simnuke.org/

~Happy Anniversary to all the people whose jobs depend upon the maintenance and proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials. It's an awesome responsibility with incalculable heath risks. Better you and yours' then me and mine.

NASA 's Sensor Web Project

To improve our ability to track the transport of pollutants from their various sources to populated cities and towns around the globe, NASA technologists are exploring an innovative technology called the “sensor web.” This interconnected “web of sensors” coordinates observations by spacecraft, airborne instruments and ground-based data-collecting stations. Instead of operating independently, these sensors collect data as a collaborative group, sharing information about an event as it unfolds over time.

press release [nasa] via/archived world changing

The image shows Aura and Aqua satellites working as a space-based "search-and-rescue" team to observe forest fires using sensor web experiment measurements.Credit: NASA

~Does this project have military, anti-terrorism or law enforcement applications? I can't imagine NASA is solely interested in the (almost)real-time tracking and modeling of CO2, wildfire and volcanic events. Yet there's no mention, among the thousands of man-made materials that might find there way into the atmosphere, of what other sorts of pollutants, NASAs sensors and satellites will be able to detect and track. (radiation, meth-labs, biologics?)

Mobile TV

"Historically, the wireless mobile industry has changed the way that we live, work and play by providing communications anytime, anywhere to anyone at an affordable price. A new technology application in the cellular industry will again change the way we live. In the near future, mobile television services – delivered over cellular networks to handheld wireless terminals – offer great promise as potential revenue generators for players across the value chain (e.g., network operators, broadcasters/content providers, equipment manufacturers)."

link to pdf press release

~Nothing exciting about individual users creating/providing content?

related from India: Smarter Idiot Box

Television signals need not be distributed only through cable or satellites any longer. Telecom companies can now move channels on their broadband network, or through wireless technology on to the mobile devices. Clearly, the way TV is seen and distributed will change.

press release

~In America consumers will pay $1.00 a-minute to watch on-demand tv on their mobile-devices/computer monitors?

Photos: Rio de Janeiro

for example:

portfolio [betacorpo]

Photos: Medieval Boston

link [cyburbia forums] via conscientious

~See a little of what cheap oil and the automobile 'cost' Boston.

Patriot Act About to be Made Permanent -- Expiration Date Deleted

links [politech]

~We cannot rest until terrorism is defeated.

[photo via thenarrativenet not from politech]

US Imposes Control Over New Security Threat--Birdwatchers

Law enforcement officials say that because the birdwatchers have equipment such as binoculars, telescopes and cameras, they have the potential to commit acts of espionage. The areas they use are sometimes close to military bases, dams and sewage plants.

Because they have "sophisticated gear and [are] looking at things not normally photographed by the common citizen in this area, they may be stopped...

story

~I for one am happy to explain to anyone with a gun why I find a particular thicket, pond, field, back-yard, marshy area, parking lot, tree or even a garbage dump worthy of my interest. Thank YOU for asking.

wood-cock

[image cieciel/ not from above]

~Nothing illegal here? State-protected land on one side of the road, private/residential property where this bird was headed. Stopping the car and turning off the engine in the middle of the road to watch its ancient, focused, goofy, bob-bob-bob step/ bob-bob-bob step until it disappeared could've been noted as actionable behavior for anyone trained and paid to care?
We had passed this way only a minute before in the other direction and had turned around to see if there was a path on the state's property. And there this guy was. Amazing luck.

UK Families Feel Pain of Name Delay

The first of the victims of last Thursday's bomb blasts was formally named yesterday (Monday July 11) as bereaved families began to vent their frustration at delays in identifying the dead.

Twenty-four hours after the train bombings in Madrid last year, Spaniards knew that at least 190 people had died. And by then most of the bodies had also been identified. Most were buried within three days of the attacks.

"There may be a conflict between the natural desire of families to begin the grieving process and the police saying they need more forensic tests," said Deborah Coles, of Inquest. [the organisation which supports the bereaved in coroners' courts,]

story

~What bizarre grieving rituals these island people possess.

CCTV Cameras on London Bus Were Not Working

The Hunt

... it was discovered the CCTV cameras on the bus that blew up were not working so detectives will not get vital images of the bomber.
One senior (Scotland) Yard source said: "It's a big blow and a disappointment. If the cameras had been running we would have had pin-sharp close-up pictures of the person who carried out this atrocity.
"We don't know if the driver forgot to switch them on or if there was a technical problem but there are no images."
The bus had four cameras - one covering people getting on, the second at the exit doors and one on each deck scanning the length of the vehicle.
But the anti-terrorist squad are confident that other CCTV footage will help nail the three other terrorists.
Senior sources at the Yard said they were seizing film from an estimated 2,000 cameras in the biggest operation of its kind.
Film from every Tube train and station will be examined as well as footage from the 12 main line termini and scores of platform cameras and trains across the British Rail network.
Scores of street traffic cameras and those protecting banks, businesses and shops may have picked up the bomber when he boarded the No 30 bus somewhere along the double-decker's route.

Andy Hayman, the Met's Assistant Commissioner and terrorism co-ordinator, said: "The bombers are all certain to have been caught on many cameras during their journey to and on the Underground.
"They were not masked so we will end up with very good pictures that will identify them."

British Transport Police have recovered nearly a million used tickets from barriers across the rail network, hoping some will carry the bombers' fingerprints as they travelled into London.

story [the Mirror]~

A CIA History of the Bay of Pigs

During the 1970s, CIA historian Jack Pfeiffer wrote a Top Secret multi-volume history of 1961’s Bay of Pigs intervention in Cuba.
Before his death, Pfeiffer sued unsuccessfully to de-classify some of the History. Though it is widely believed that all volumes are still classified, one is available at National Archives’ JFK Assassination Records Collection.
Pfeiffer writes of incompetence at CIA, of an out-of-touch Allen Dulles, of too-close relations between CIA and anti-Castro U.S. corporate leaders, and about “The Question of Assassination.”

http://www14.homepage.villanova.edu/david.barrett/bop.html

via: secrecy news

~Blame it on the bossa nova.

[image via google/ not with above links]

Police Still Using Matrix Database

Privacy advocates...don't like the idea, saying government shouldn't have easy access to so much information about people who haven't done anything wrong.

story

~I feel like someone's messing with me while I sleep.

A Cartoon by Mr. Fish

@ [harpers]

Nukes in the News: Saudi Arabia

Where Terror & the Bomb Could Meet

Saudi Arabia has been under increasing pressure to open its nuclear facilities for inspection as the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) suspects that its nuclear program has reached a level (with Pakistani cooperation) where it should attract international attention. The pressure has also come from Europe and the United States, who want Riyadh to permit unhindered access to its nuclear facilities.

Well before the IAEA probe began, the US had been investigating whether or not the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Dr. AQ Khan, sold nuclear technology to the Saudis and other Arab countries. Acting under extreme pressure of the IAEA, the Saudi Government signed the Small Quantities Protocol (SQP) on June 16, 2005, which makes inspections less problematic. However, the US, European Union and Australia want it to agree to full inspections. The Saudi stand is that they would agree to the demand only if other countries did so, including Israel.

International concerns intensified in 2003 in the wake of revelations about Dr. AQ Khan's proliferation activities. The IAEA investigations show that Khan sold or offered nuclear weapons technology to Saudi Arabia and several Middle Eastern states, including Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

story by Amir Mir [asia times]

Cops Spy on Anti-Speed Camera Web-site, Make Arrest

article/links [techdirt]

The "Fuck Natalee Holloway" Hate Mail

A story entitled "Fuck Natalee Holloway" was posted to our [Kuro5hin] site a few days ago.

['In the United States alone, more than a million people are reported missing each year. The majority of these cases involve minors. The majority of those cases are runaways, but there are also significant numbers of abductions at the hands of both relatives and strangers."]

It is already the 2nd highest-ranked link on a Google search for "natalee".

Searching for her full name shows her official missing persons site 1st and our link as 2nd.

As such, the administration at K5 has received more hate mail than ever before.

Members have demanded that it be published in its near entirety, so here are all email responses received to date.

(422 comments, 1592 words in story)

link

~I'm in awe of what so many people find worthy of their concern. She's the American high-shool graduate missing in Aruba. (Roofies and alcohol?)

Hunter Thompson's Last Wish Granted

Gonzo in Space: Hunter Thompson Gets Wish, Ashes to be Fired Out Of Cannon in August

NEW YORK The long-awaited firing of gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson's ashes into space from a cannon will take place August 20 from behind his home in Woody Creek, Colo., near Aspen.

Actor Johnny Depp has arranged the event through a Beverly Hills, Ca. "event planner," reports the Denver Post.

The remains of the late writer will be blasted from the top of a 150-foot temporary tower exactly six months after his suicide by gunshot.

Neighbors and family members have reportedly gone along with the idea, and the required official okays have been secured.

Depp has promised to make sure private security keeps the public out.

@

related: Hunter S.Thompson links

~You think he would've asked his friends and family to partake of his (finely ground) ashes in various snortable and smokable psycho-active substances.

By the way, the 'public' Johnny Depp promises to use private security to keep out are people like you and me. Don't you feel special? Being excluded as a matter of record?

Not that keeping the public at bay is untypical of Hunter Thompson's life. One doesn't live in Woody Creek, Colorado, near Aspen, to get up-close and personal with the masses. More to the point, isn't there something about drug abuse that's anti-egalitarian? "Liberty", certainly. "Fraternity" and "Equality'..not so much, not nearly as important.

Thompson's 'Lee Harvey Oswald' Pose

[image via google/ not with above]

Gov Bush Ends Sciavo Inquiry

story

Jerry vs. the Kids

His Labor Day telethons have raised millions for muscular dystrophy, but Jerry Lewis, King of Comedy, is under siege from disabled adults...

"Four major annual telethons--Easter Seals, the Arthritis Foundation, United Cerebral Palsy, and the M.D.A.--are the single most powerful cultural mechanism defining the public identities of people with disabilities in our society today, mainly because they reach so many people," reports Paul Longmore, a historian who teaches at San Francisco State and who has specialized in the history of people with disabilities. "The telethon sponsors claim that, whatever condition people with disabilities have, that condition has essentially spoiled their lives, and the only way to correct that is to cure them. The message of the disability-rights movement is that it's possible to be a whole person with a disability."

The disability constituency is vast; according to government figures, 43 million Americans are defined as disabled in one way or another...

article written By Leslie Bennetts [1996]

~Are performers the only people whose grotesque behavior is openly tolerated? (Reported?) Or does every bureaucracy, foundation, and industry have certain individuals whose genius or contributions require eveyone else to bend-over-backwards in awed indulgence? (Where are those stories?)

I can't tell how much of my identity has been defined by corporations, foundations and gov't. If its a matter of how much time one spends on corporate or foundation-type concerns... they own me.

Bloggers Need Not Apply

The pertinent question for bloggers is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one's unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It's not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it's also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses.

We've seen the hapless job seekers who destroy the good thing they've got going on paper by being so irritating in person that we can't wait to put them back on a plane. Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know "the real them" -- better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn't want to know more.

story

~An e-mail friend concurs: "I think it's true. Not so long ago I applied for a some real life jobs: made a resume, a cover letter, sent it all out and.... nothing.
Two places wrote back with interest but then never replied back to my response. I could only conclude they had googled my name.
I dumped my blog, erased the google and yahoo caches and applied to new companies. Suddenly, now that my name is not so much google-ble I'm the person in demand. I got so much work I can't say no enough.
As much as people say they admire all these blog thoughts of mine, I
imagine those very same people would not hire me to do anything worth money."

Another e-mail friend responding to the article and the above comment notes: "Doesn't startle me. Regardless of what they say, virtually no employer wants employees who think independently, articulately, on-line, for public consumption. I would expect much the same problems for bloggers who go apartment-hunting, or seek a promotion at work, or run for office within their church or club, etc.
He never went on-line, but an old friend published his anarchist zine for so many years, he told me he'd been evicted twice and had recurring troubles every time he looked for a new apartment, despite being gainfully employed and always paying the rent on time."

~[Cieciel] The juxtaposition of police-red-squad methods with corporate personnel-department procedures is to be expected in these days when lay-offs cause an immediate rise in a company's stock price?

One more e-mailed observation: "It's interesting to note that at no point in the article do they mention whether they actually HIRED someone to fill their "important" job. Candidates can be disqualified for ANY reason, but if you eliminate ALL the candidates for whatever litany of petty reasons and you fail to fill the position you're back to square one: a job that needs to be filled and no one to fill it. These are academics and as we're all aware an academic will spend endless hours discussing the many ways of wiping an ass (hopping on one leg, on a trampoline, orbiting Pluto, etc.) without ever getting around to the wiping portion of the procedure. In the real world, shit goes out the door or shit piles up. After reading the article I smell a lot of shit piling up."

[image via spacemanbob/ not from above]

Photographs: Tamara Lischka

"Fetus, fish, squid - the lifeless bodies of these creatures appear eerily animate, even grotesque out of context. Yet the hands that hold them nurture as much as they expose, fingers curving around the tiny forms, even as they lift them gently up into the light."

link via concientious

Gigapixl Project

A closer view, 20% of the original image. The following two images are from the brick building at the right and the wooden structure to the front left.

link to Bodie Gallery [links to other photos on the left]

Joerg (Conscientious) observes: "If you have a camera that allows you to take huge photos that doesn't necessarily mean that you take good photos. But still, the resolution is fairly impressive.
PS: Quite ironically, the whole technique is based on film, scanned
later. See gigapixl faqs"

First World War.com: Vintage Photographs

for example:

US Soldier With Gasmask

link to index

CODE PINK's Counter-Recruitment Campaign

The military is desperate for young people to fight in Iraq and they are doing everything they can to pull in young people: promising them a college education, big cash bonuses, and trying to guarantee that new enlistees won't get sent to the Middle East. Recruiters roam the halls of high schools luring students into conversation with free goods, rock climbing walls, war simulation video games, and, worst of all, fancy Hummers.

Join CODEPINK and the national counter-recruitment movement...

site related: leavemychildalone etc.

~During the Viet Nam War, Dr. Benjamin Spock encouraged young men to return their selective-service cards to their local draft boards to protest the war. Back then federal law required all men of draft-age to carry their draftcards with them at all times.
I'm guessing times are different and the DOD won't make life difficult for today's anti-war youth and their parents. There's no way for the Pentagon to punish, now or in the future, those students who've filled out the necessary forms and 'opted out'? There's no draft boards and the threat of prison or immediate military service to use against these protestors.

Sexual Illiteracy

What is sexual literacy?
And why is it so needed now?

press release By Gilbert Herdt

NSRC Campaign for Sexual Literacy: http://SexLiteracy.org

Diederik weighs in: "This is absurd: Best paid and most celebrated practising sexologist in the world, making claims on "sexuality that is genuine, well rounded and healthy". I honestly considered this man a promoter for my PhD.
...now I don't expect every man on Earth to be a poststructuralist, but come on! listen to this: "As a nation, we [Herdt plus?] fail to make progress with sexuality because packaged sex is confused with genuine sexuality". What is this man talking about? Anti-sexualists are not panicking, they're not horrified, they're not illiterate, they're not confused, they just hate sex, for "good" reasons.
And what if Í hate to "read" sex, to see sex as readable, distrust the metaphor? What a grotesque utopia: "literacy is an attitude of openness and the desire to learn", let's all just learn! And have genuine sex! With genuine people! Sex at last!"

[image via google/ not from above]

Iraq: Predator Drone Kills 2

...a remote-controlled Predator drone conducted a strike Friday (July?) against militants near Qaim, an Anbar province town on the Syrian border, the U.S. military said. The Predator fired a Hellfire missile at a truck carrying rocket-propelled grenades and suspected insurgents.
Two insurgents were killed, said Marine 1st Lt. Pamela Marshall, a spokeswoman.

story

related/revised Unmanned Drone Kills

The Extreme Sex Test

for example:

Have you watched a pornographic movie with your sex partner?
Have you been in or photographed a nude photo/video?
Have you had pictures/video taken of you having sex?
Have you received money or some favor in exchanged for sexual activities?
Have you forced or coerced someone into having sex with you?

link thanks