February 28, 2006
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thanks Diederik
Memory Wiki
The goal of the site is to create a continuously expanding archive of memories on the web. MemoryWiki memoirs can be about almost anything that the writer believes is significant. This includes both personal experiences (a first kiss) and historic experiences (the 9/11 attacks). One might think of MemoryWiki as StoryCorps on the web. Both share a common mission: to allow the people to share their common experiences now and with the future. MemoryWiki is non-profit.
MemoryWiki is built on a modified version of Mediawiki, the same Content Management Software used by Wikipedia. No registration is needed to add memoirs; users just choose a title and begin to type. Once the memoir is entered, MemoryWiki editors (“stewards”) will format it, index it, and then lock it so no further changes can be made. Authors can alter or delete their memoirs at anytime by notifying the editors.
press release | Cyberjournalist
http://www.memorywiki.org/en/MemoryWiki
[photo not from above]
My Crowd: Part I
Or, Phase 5: A report from the inventor of the flash mob
[T]hey have a goal which is there before they can find words for it. This goal is the blackest spot where most people are gathered. --Elias Canetti
http://harpers.org/MyCrowd_01.html
[photo not with article]
BioSecurity & BioDefense Organizations Resource
The Federation of American Scientists has created an internet resource for biosecurity policy, bioterrorism information, and biodefense research. The organizations listed here represent various perspectives on what actions individual scientists, research institutions, science journals, the public, and government can do to minimize the threat of bioterrorism while maximizing the benefits of life science research
(With a) interactive map (that) provides the locations of both operational and planned Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) laboratories in the United States as well as the National Biocontainment Laboratories (NBLs), the Regional Biocontainment Laboratories (RBLs), and the Regional Centers of Excellence (RCE) for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, established by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
http://fas.org/biosecurity/resource/
~South of the Mason-Dixon line, i.e. Texas, Georgia and Maryland has more than it's share of Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) labs. Thank You.
[photo not from FAS]
Wireless "Wear and Tear" Sensors
Scientists at The University of Manchester are to develop (by 2010) a new type of wireless sensor which will be able to remotely monitor mechanical parts and systems. The aim is to produce a sensor which can be seamlessly fitted inside gearboxes, motors, diesel engines, wheel bearings and door mechanisms, in which faults can occur.
Manchester will develop a multi-measureand MEMS sensor which will measure a range of selected parameters (e.g. vibration, temperature, pressure) for condition monitoring applications. Another application will be inside lubricated machinery. In this instance, sensors would measure concentrations of metallic elements created through 'wear and tear' from which the life-span of the part could be calculated.
...known as DYNAMITE (Dynamic Decisions in Maintenance), aimed at advancing the capabilities of European industry in the field of e-maintenance and condition monitoring. The project will focus on applications in plant machinery, manufacturing and transport.
press release | EurekaAlerts
Digimag
For Your To-Read List
The Italian online publication Digimag is an impressive example of collective labor. A byproduct of Digicult, the web platform founded by artist Marco Mancuso in January 2005, the monthly magazine tracks art across disciplines, encompassing internet, sound, and video art as well as performance of all kinds. Its contributors include a large stable of Italian artists and critics with a notably international vision... For those interested in staying abreast of art happenings, Digimag provides a good compass to local music and art events. For those not in the area, you can connect yourself to networks of media art internationally via this very thriving Italian hub. - Lauren Cornell | NetArtNews
http://www.digicult.it/digimag_eng/index.html
February 27, 2006
Mark Danner: You Can Anything with a Bayonet Except Sit on It
A Tomdispatch interview with Mark Danner.
TD: Torture hasn't exactly been absent from U.S. government policy in our lifetimes, but one difference, it seems to me, is the degree to which our leaders have been involved. I think Rumsfeld was getting reports on the Lindh interrogation by the hour.
Danner: When we look at the techniques used by the CIA, these things go back a ways. Alfred McCoy and others have written about this. These techniques of torture, developed in the 1950s and 1960s, are reappearing. There is one very important difference: the explicit official approval and the determination to defend these techniques in the case of public exposure and public controversy. And torture has survived its exposure - a critical difference. The clear evidence of intent at the very top of the government is also striking.
On empire, what's unusual about this administration isn't only its focus on power, but on unilateralism. It's the flip side of isolationism. The notion that alliances, economic or political, and international law inevitably hinder the most powerful nation. You know, the image of the strings around Gulliver. They said in the National Security Strategy of the United States, the 2005 version, that rivals will continue to challenge us using the strategies of the weak including "international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism." They're associating terror and asymmetric warfare with international law as similar ways to blunt the overwhelming power of the United States. That represents an attitude toward international law and institutions that, I think, is a real and dramatic break from past practice in the United States. In our history, certainly recently, there's just no comparison to them - no government anywhere near as radical.
TD: I came across this sentence today in a piece on the Plame case. "A spokesman for Cheney would not comment for this story, saying the investigation into the leak was ongoing. The spokesman refused to give her name."
Danner: (laughs) A secret spokesman
It's hard to predict what the Bush people's reaction would be if they found themselves the target of aggressive congressional committees actually investigating officials who faced being charged, convicted, and sent to jail. Even with Congress actually doing its job, we would confront the central political reality of our time: Terrorism has embedded itself in our political system, which is to say that fear has become the most lucrative political emotion and the administration would retain a considerable power to promote fear. It has the power to suggest that an attack on the national security bureaucracy is an attack on the safety of the people.
complete interview | TruthOut
[photo defenselink\ not above]
Graduates versus Oligarchs
Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.
So who are the winners from rising inequality?
A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.
But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.
Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.
article by Paul Krugman
[illus. not with article]
February 26, 2006
TVs Aryan Sisterhood
They know only one hair color: blonder!
Joanna Pitman estimates in On Blondes that only one in 20 white adult Americans is a genuine blond, yet one in three adult American females has the look.
slide show essay by Jack Shafer | Slate
via Conscientious
UK: Sensor Camera Plan to Catch "Fly-Tippers"
Motion-sensing CCTV equipment is to be brought in a drive to clamp down on illegal fly-tippers who are spoiling the north Shropshire countryside.
District council bosses have £10,000 to spend on new cameras which will be put in fly-tipping spots to combat the problem which costs taxpayers thousands of pounds every year.
The equipment will also be used to gather evidence against pet owners who do not clean up after their dogs and those who drop litter.
item | Shropshire Star
~"Fly-tippers" are those who illegally dump garbage.
Olympics Closing Ceremony
Artists perform during the Winter Olympics closing ceremony in Turin, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006.
Dressed in playing cards, performers dance during the Winter Olympics closing ceremony.
more ceremony photos: MSNBC also Yahoo News Photos
US Defends Conditions at Bagram Prison
The New York Times on Sunday reported that inmates are held by the dozen in wire cages at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul - some for as long as two or three years without access to lawyers or the chance to hear the allegations against them.
[Men are held by the dozen in large wire cages... sleeping on the floor on foam mats and, until about a year ago, often using plastic buckets for toilets. Before recent renovations, they rarely saw daylight except for brief visits to a small exercise yard.]*
Col. James Yonts, the U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, would not confirm or deny whether inmates are held for up to three years, saying the secretary of defense sets the criteria for detention. But he added that all those held were at one time "enemy combatants" and their status is regularly reviewed.
The U.S. military maintains that "enemy combatants" are not covered by the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.
The military has not allowed Afghan and international human rights groups access to the Bagram Detention Facility, although it does allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the prisoners.
The Times report described conditions as "primitive." It cited military figures as saying numbers of detainees at Bagram had risen from about 100 at the start of 2004 to as many as 600 at times last year.
It said the increase was in part a result of decision by the U.S. government to shut off the flow of detainees to Guantanamo after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those prisoners had some basic due-process rights. The report said the question of whether those same rights apply to detainees in Bagram has not been tested in court.
["Guantánamo was a lightning rod," said a former senior administration official who participated in the discussions and who, like many of those interviewed, would discuss the matter only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding it. "For some reason, people did not have a problem with Bagram. It was in Afghanistan."]*
story | Seattle Intelligencer
also [*s]: the NY Times' story | International Herald Tribune
>related: Reservist Acquited of Abusing Detainees
(for news' junkies note the NYTimes' story appears after the trial)
A military jury acquitted a reservist Thursday (Feb. 23) in the final case involving an Army reserve unit from Ohio that was linked to prisoner abuses at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld speaks with Army Sgt. 1st Class Rick Scanvett, assigned to Commander Task Force 76, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, on Dec. 22, 2005. Rumsfeld is in Afghanistan to visit and thank the troops for their service and to meet with the senior leadership. DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley, U.S. Navy.
~Bagram Air Base is the safe place in Afghanistan for America's Secretary of Defense to visit yet it houses hundreds of men incognito for years in "primitive" prison conditions? Every military base, (every Republican's home), needs a crowded dungeon?
February 25, 2006
Commercials Involving Motherhood
"Commercials involving motherhood give me the creeps. GE has this one right now trumpeting their ultrasound technology and general awesomeness that features someone singing a lullaby and all these multi-ethnic moms staring at their babes with single-minded devotion. It's like the BORG!
I fear and distrust my body. I know what it wants to do to me.
My favorite commercial involving motherhood was this New Jersey PSA for post-partum depression/psychosis, in which an adoring-new-mom asks an obviously-distracted-and-about-to-kill-her-offspring-new-mom something insipid like, "Oh, Darla, isn't being a mom wonderful?" and Darla goes into this rapid-fire, emotionless, deadpan, "Actually, no. All it does it cry. I don't want to touch it, I don't want to feed it. I just wish it would go away!" speech. And I know, I know. Crazy Darla is crazy. She needs help, and soothing new mom medicines that will turn her into the peppy infant-care provider she needs to be. But all I could think was, "Rock on! Buck that system! Leave the kid in the grocery store and go to Vegas!"
This is not meant to be a slam on moms, BTW. I know all you new mommas are not robot-people from the stars. Moreover, I am not a mom, and thus have stupid, uninformed opinions on motherhood. But one of the things that worries me about it is that I value the illusion of my free will a whole lot, and Mark tells me that pregnancy induces all kinds of joyous mom hormones that basically reconcile you to momtasticness. I don't want to be reconciled. If I go down that path, dude, I want to have made the choice and be boldly pursuing a course. But hormones, evolution, the materialism of the body, all that gives me the metaphysical willies. Eek!"
posted by Reen |link| St*arnosed Mole
[photo not from above post]
Photo-caption Non Sequitur
Throughout history there has been only one thing that ruling interests have ever wanted -and that is everything: all the choice lands, forests, game, herds, harvests, mineral deposits, and precious metals of the earth; all the wealth, riches, and profitable returns; all the productive facilities, gainful inventiveness, and technologies; all the control positions of the state and other major institutions; all public supports and subsidies, privileges and immunities; all the protections of the law with none of its constraints; all the services, comforts, luxuries, and advantages of civil society with none of the taxes and costs. Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot; we can get more; we want it all.
[photo from whitehouse.gov \
caption from Dirty Truths by Michael Parenti]
Video: VSocial
"The fastest, easiest way to upload, watch and share your favorite video clips."
http://www.vsocial.com/#pagekeep::p,hot::b,HotContext::g,1
Ten Best Flickr Mashups
A mashup... is a hybrid web application that uses data from an outside source to drive a web service. Mashups can be created using data culled from RSS feeds, public databases, or any open data source.
There's a current industry trend in which big name websites like Yahoo, Amazon and Google are offering access to their public databases and live content through the use of their publicly available programming interfaces, or APIs. Programmers can use the APIs to gather and parse data from these sites, and then incorporate that data into their own applications. The result is a new breed of website — fully integrated hybrids containing both new data and repurposed data, all presented in refreshing and unexpected ways.
Flickr (T)he photo storage and sharing site...offers a flexible API that can accept calls and return results for tags, photos, user names, contacts, and even the nebulous popularity ranking called "interestingness." The Flickr API also has several wrappers written by third party developers that make it usable within other programming environments such as Flash, PHP, python, Java, Perl and Ruby.
article with links by Michael Calore | Webmonkey
Managing Digital Images:
Applying Ratings and Keywords
The market value of a photograph is dependent on your ability to get that image into the hands of someone who wants it. All of the work that you do to rate and group your images will add value to them, by making them easier to find and bring to market. And don't forget, sometimes the "client" is you. By applying a sound rating system to your collection, you can get the maximum commercial, artistic, and personal value out of your images.
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/lpt/a/6497 by Peter Krogh
February 24, 2006
The Words China Doesn't Want to Hear
"This list is apparently a list used by a Chinese weblogging service to filter content. These words can been posted to a Chinese weblog, but the post will likely be removed shortly afterwards. In some cases, the IP address which posted this term will be blocked from other future posts. In other cases, the post will be allowed to remain, but the sensitive word will be replaced with asterisks. These results are consistent with findings in Rebecca MacKinnon’s research that suggest that each blogging company is using a different mechanism to censor blog posts, but working from a common list of sensitive terms.
A quick tour through the terms is an amazing insight into my ignorance of China..."
blog entry: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=382
WP article Key Words to Filter Web Content
related: Technorati's link to 31 blogs that posted this WP story.
via Robot Wisdom
~Diederik notes: I like: "The Central Propaganda Department is the AIDS of Chinese society". Great political anthropology..."Buy corpses".
And of course: "Below is the list. Obscenities have been withheld"...Censorship breeds allies? ...also: "Fetus soup".
[Cieciel] Diederik got me wondering what might be the '18 obscenities' the editors of the Washington Post and the Chinese censors have in common? "The seven words you can't say on the radio" come readily to mind but beyond those I'm stumped.
Here's the list of names of people censored by the Chinese Government, Google, Yahoo and MSN:
Bao Tong, Chen Yonglin, Cui Yingjie, Ding Jiaban, Du Zhaoyong, Gao Jingyun, Gao Zhisheng, He Jiadong, He Weifang, Hu Xingdou, Hu Yuehua, Hua Guofeng, Huang Jingao, Jiang Mianheng, Jiang Yanyong, Jiang Zemin, Jiao Guobiao, Jin Zhong, Li Zhiying, Liang Yunca, Liu Jianfeng, Liu Junning, Liu Xiabobo, Nie Shubin, Nie Shubin (repeated), Sun Dawu, Wang Binyu, Wang Lixiong, Xu Zhiyong, Yang Bin, Yang Dongping, Yu Jie, Zhang Weiying, Zhang Xingshu, Zhang Zuhua, Zhao Yan, Zhou Qing, Zhu Chenghu, Zhu Wenhu, Zi Yang (in English), Ziyang (in Chinese), Ziyang (in English), zzy (in English, abbreviation for Zhao Ziyang)
Daughter? Son? Brother? Sister? Father? Mother? Web content.
related (but not on list)?:
[photo via PenChinese]
China:Torture leaves freed Tiananmen dissident mentally ill
After 16 years, Tiananmen dissident Yu Dongyue was finally freed from prison yesterday, but with his mental health impaired...
Press release | Amnesty International
more web content from Reporters Without Borders:
A fellow prisoner said Yu had been tied to a electricity pole and left out in the hot sun for several days. He was also kept in solitary
confinement for two years and that was what broke him." @
In 1997 it was learned he had developed severe mental problems after spending at least six months in a cell smaller than 3 sq.m. @
The Diu Hua Foundation's database still listed about 70 dissidents linked to the 1989 protests as being in jail. @ | Asia Media
Art: Electronic Arts Intermix
>While in NYC...
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a leading nonprofit resource for video art and interactive media. Founded in 1971, EAI's core program is the distribution and preservation of a major collection of new and historical media works by artists. EAI also offers educational services, viewing access, exhibitions and public programs. The Online Catalogue is a comprehensive resource on the 175 artists and 3,000 works in the EAI collection. The searchable database includes artists' biographies, QuickTime excerpts, research materials, artists' Web projects, and online ordering
a selecton of short video excerpts (Quicktime)
for example...
Nam June Paik: Global Groove, 1973, Video Still
EAI on Nam June Paik
~There's not enough streaming free video here. And I don't think any of the 77 librairies in my local library system will have for inter-library loan videos or dvds of anyone of these. I'll never be able to misunderstand, misinterpret, be miffed or mystified by these artists. They can't be that important otherwise their work would be easier to see?
After searching my local library system with the names from the list above, I found a catalog from Nam June Paik's show at the Whitney Museum; a number of photo books by Cindy Sherman; a dvd with 'short films' by Chris Marker and one copy of the 2 1/2 hour dvd "Art 21: Art in the 21st Century" featuring Mike Kelley, Chris Marker, Charles Atlas and Eleanor Antin (with 17 other artists).
A 16th Member of the US Intelligence Community
With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, the U.S. intelligence community gained its fifteenth member.
Last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) became the sixteenth member.
blog entry | Secrecy News
~These 16 agencies are America's secret police? Or is it 9/11 and Bush's War that has made me security conscious, imagining their work is more a secret?
Timeline of American Hegemony
"It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
--Harold Pinter, The Nobel Prize Lecture, December 2005.
http://www.flagrancy.net/timeline.html
~'Hegemony' is one of those leftist words.
[photo defenselink\ not from above]
Overheard at Starbucks
"Have you noticed...are there more gay spooks than straight spooks?"
---"We've talked about this before; being gay is not now nor has ever been a prerequisite for spy work, the secret police, FEMA or the FBI.
One-in-ten Braveheart; do the math.
It's not who you blow, it's who you know.
J. Edgar Hoover's homosexuality was not a masonic rule. Nowhere else in the world could a gay man have held that much power for that many years. He was an American original.
Are you being spooked?
Are you seeing more gay women spooks then straight women spooks? Or just gay men spooks?
You know what they say about spookophobes?
Have you been getting enough sleep?
Are there any spooks here now, gay or straight?"
February 23, 2006
The History Journals Guide
for example from the HJGs Discussion Lists Directory:
Comic Studies \ History of Sexuality \ History of Photography\ Media History
much more: http://www.history-journals.de/
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog
The International Animated Film Society: ASIFA-Hollywood has embarked on an ambitious project to create an animation archive, museum, and library for the benefit of the animation community, students and general public. The first phase of this project involves the creation of a VIRTUAL ARCHIVE which will house images, movie clips and sound files pertaining to the art of animation.
http://www.animationarchive.org/
Blog: Drunken Stepfather
for example: I Am Britney in Water
"It is 3 am, and I just realized that I cropped pics of Britney in water to put up on my site. My life consists of finding pics of celebrities in their bathing suits/compromising postitions and I am not even fast or good at it. It makes me wonder why I do what I do. I would tell you a funny story about how one of the girls I used to date was jealous of how hard my nipples would get. She was one of those bitches who always rocked ice cubes to look sexy, and she couldn’t stay with me, because she was jealous of my nipples..." @
http://www.drunkenstepfather.com/
~Misogyny disguised as celebrity bashing.
More American men then ever are living separate from women, without women?
More American men then ever have forgotten that women first took care of them. (What have you done for me lately?)
There's only so many ways (for real men) to say I love you, I need you, and they've all been said.
Masturbation is not nearly as satisfying as one would imagine, considering the effort and the products, the images, that inspire it?
If women knew what men were really thinking...
(They'ld harvest our gonads like avocados no later than the first signs of puberty.)
There's only so many ways to say celebrities suck?
American manga?
February 22, 2006
from http://www.freshwidow.com/bradscomix/indexgallery.html (Brad's Politcal Cartoons)
South Dakota to Legislate "Intellectual Diversity"?
The chief sponsor of the bill, Representative Phyllis Heineman (R-Sioux Falls), says the legislation is a matter of accountability. She told the RAPID CITY JOURNAL "We are looking at a 2007 higher education budget of over half a billion dollars. It is just good governance that we ask questions and seek answers in a lot of areas." She pointed out that in the Legislature both sides of an issue are treated with respect. Each side gets equal time, Heineman said. "We should expect nothing less from our universities."
The usual suspects - such as the ACLU, the South Dakota Education Association and the State Board of Regents all vehemently oppose the bill.
Readers should note that last session of the Legislature South Dakota came within a whisker of outlawing all abortions despite the fact that Roe v Wade is supposed to be settled law.
Often states are laboratories where experiments can take places which will serve as models for other states. Soon there is a national movement.
story | Free Congress Foundation
>related various Next Conservatism articles
~A college education is expensive.These people are tired of paying for their kids to listen to things the kids don't want to hear, or they believe to be Un-American, i.e. Anti-Christian and evil. (Respect their authoritay.)
Looks like the conservatives have begun their reform of state universities. Should we expect results similar to what Republican controlled state legislatures have accomplished in public high schools and grade schools throughout America?
Offoffoff Film
http://www.offoffoff.com/film/index.php3
~Feel part of the international art scene, (for as long as the window's open). Blame WWII, the Atlantic Ocean, abstract expressionists,and Andy Warhola for New York City's role as dust mop (overused coffee filter) to the world of art?
February 21, 2006
The Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees
Through Analysis of Department of Defense Data
Report Confirms That Vast Majority of Prisoners Posed No Threat to the United States and Were Turned Over to U.S. Military for Bounty
The report found that "55 percent of the 517 detainees had no hostile act listed as the basis for detention" and a mere 5 percent were captured by U.S. forces, with the rest not picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan but in Pakistan and handed to the U.S. by warlords and others for large bounties. According the report's careful analysis of the Defense Department records, 92% of the prisoners in Guantánamo were not characterized as Al Qaeda fighters.
description with link to Seton Hall Report (pdf)
by Professor Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall Law School and attorney Joshua Denbeaux. | Center for Constitutional Rights
~More poetry than irrefutable fact (but are poems often wrong?)
A link is found between morphine addiction and the tendency to explore
press release | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
(The UAB research group is part of a Spanish nationwide research network into addictive behaviours that is part of the Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias (FIS))
[photo not from UAB]
Perform the Play "Guantanamo"
Here's a great idea for an event. Put on a performance of the play "Guantanamo."
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/8045
~Hey kids let's put on a show!
[photo google\ not from "Guantanamo"]
Not Your Mother's Snowclone
"In an entertaining piece on shelter magazines in the March 2006 Atlantic Monthly ( "Home Alone: The dark heart of shelter-lit addiction"), Terry Castle reports (on p. 122) that
If you enter the words "not your mother's" on Google, you'll get nearly 200,000 results, a huge number of which point you immediately toward shelter-mag articles. "Not your mother's [whatever]" turns out to be an established interiors trope, endlessly recycled in titles, pull quotes, advertisements, photo captions, and the like. "Not Your Mother's Tableware" is a typical heading--meant presumably to assure you that if you acquire the featured cutlery you will also, metaphorically speaking, be giving your mom the finger.
Castle is exploring the message of the shelter magazines that you can free yourself from your mother's influence and make "your own space". Along the way she has stumbled upon a snowclone that we haven't discussed here: "not your R's X" (where R is a kin term) conveying that this X is new, unprecedented, improved, superior, unconventional, etc.
link to blog entry | Language Log
>related Language Log's search results for snowclone
Hand-Held Device Brings Speech to Impaired, Disabled Individuals
University of Virginia neurolinguist Filip Loncke has the only research site in the United States using the apparatus - a barcode reader called the B.A. Bar™ that was developed in Switzerland by the Federation Suisse des Teletheses and made available in that country in 2001.
The barcode reader provides auditory feedback when passed over the same kind of black-and-white strip used on grocery store products. In this case, the device is first used to program the barcodes with words or phrases; the barcodes can then be fixed to objects, pictures or places. The user scans the barcode with the device, and it says the word or phrase. Loncke's research shows that it is more helpful than simple pictures.
~A cell-phone manufactuer will soon add B.A. Bar (a barcode reader/speaker) to one of its phones?
The next technological step would involve placing programmable RF sensors all over one's home or workplace and a device similar to B.A. Bar that could 'scan and speak' them?
Fashion Designers Ignoring Shapes of Women's Bodies
A study conducted by a faculty member in North Carolina State University’s College of Textiles reveals that only 8 percent of women actually have hourglass figures.
Based on an analysis of the body types of more than 6,300 women, (Dr. Cindy) Istook identified seven general categories of body shapes for women. They are the rectangle, the spoon, the triangle, the inverted triangle, the hourglass, the bottom hourglass and the top hourglass.
Overheard at Starbucks
"Spending time with sick old people I can see what a tenuous hold any of us have on reality."
---"That's why there's nursing homes."
"I can see it..."
---[sung] "His mind is squirming like a toad."
"How profoundly one's perceptions can be skewed, disassembled, destroyed."
---"Ah, the polis as hospice.
It took you long enough to figure it out.
We began thinking there was an underlying pathology that prevented you from understanding..."
[sung] "If you give that man a ride, sweet memory will die."
February 20, 2006
Cold Hard Flash
"...a collection of thoughts on the recent swell of Flash-animated TV production. Over the past half-dozen years, Flash has expanded beyond the web and into broadcast TV and even feature film. Only 3 years ago, there were no more than 5 or 6 Flash-animated shows airing on TV. Today, that number is closer to 30*.:
*for example Squidbillies
Cold Hard Flash's blog entry
>related Adult Swim's Squidbillies' promos & intros downloads
Our Lord and Our Lady Come to the World
This webpage is dedicated to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Immaculate Mother of God and Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, for the greater glory of God and for the salvation of souls.
http://198.62.75.1/www1/apparitions/http:/index.htm
~Descriptions, illustrations, messages, etc. of apparitions from around the world. For example these miraculous photos taken at the Our Lady of Roses, Mary help of Mother's Shrine grounds, Bayside New York.
What's Classified & What's Not
It is important to understand that there is no rigorous, consensual definition of what constitutes classified information. Instead, in a practical sense, classified information is whatever the executive branch says it is.
(A minority of classified information, such as nuclear weapons design information, is specified and protected by statute. The remainder, the large majority, is classified by executive order.)
complete blog entry | Secrecy News
Order to Open Holocaust Archive Fought
Tempers are flaring over a U.S. demand to open to scholars and researchers a huge repository of information about the Holocaust contained in the files of the International Tracing Service at Bad Arolsen, Germany.
...the stock of files stretches for about 15.5 miles, and holds information on 17.5 million people, one of the largest closed archives anywhere.
The collection is unique in its intimate personal detailing of a catastrophe, which is what makes the question of open access so delicate. The papers may reveal who was treated for lice at which camp, what ghoulish medical experiment was conducted on which prisoner and why, who was accused by the Nazis of murder or incest or pedophilia, which Jews collaborated and how they were induced to do so.
story By ROGER COHEN | New York Times
~No where in this article does it say who might have access to this archive if and when it's opened.
Growing Files List 325,000 Terrorism Suspects
WASHINGTON - The National Counterterrorism Center maintains a central repository of 325,000 names of alleged international terrorism suspects or people who aid them, a number that has more than quadrupled since the fall of 2003...
An NCTC official refused to say how many on the list — put together from reports supplied by the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other agencies — were U.S. citizens.
The government has been trying to streamline what counterterrorism officials say are more than 26 terrorism-related databases. names from the NCTC list are provided to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, which in turn provides names for watch lists maintained by the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies.
press release via Unknown News
~Most Americans on this list are those who've done dumb (e.g. nail file carriers, panic attacks) or drunken things in airports?
Homeland Security Cops Announce in Library:
"Viewing internet pornography is forbidden"
After the two men made their announcement, one of them challenged an Internet user's choice of viewing material and asked him to step outside, according to a witness. A librarian intervened, and the two men went into the library's work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men.
Montgomery County's (Md.) chief administrative officer, Bruce Romer, issued a statement calling the incident "unfortunate" and "regrettable" -- He said the officers had been reassigned to other duties.
Romer said the officers believed they were enforcing the county's sexual harassment policy.
~Today the Little Falls' library outside DC, tomorrow the world!
Does it mean anything that the names of the two officers were not reported, after such a public display of law and ordering? I thought a breathalyzer-test was going to be mentioned somewhere in the story too.
Homeland Security Cap $15.99
Homeland Security Cap and Visor sold separately
The Catholic Shopper
~Names and badge numbers people, unless of course they've drawn their guns.
FDA Urged to Ban Treated Meat
Carbon monoxide helps food look fresh longer, but safety debated
"This meat stays red and stays red and stays red,"
....industry representatives say, color is a poor indicator of freshness as meat turns brown from exposure to oxygen long before it goes bad.
"When a product reaches the point of spoilage, there will be other signs that will be evidenced -- for example odor, slime formation and a bulging package -- so the product will not smell or look right," said Ann Boeckman, a lawyer with the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson. It represents Precept Foods LLC, a joint venture between Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. and Hormel Foods Corp. that helped pioneer the technology.
No one knows how much carbon-monoxide-treated meat is being sold; the companies involved are privately held or keep that information secret.
...the European Union has banned the use of carbon monoxide as a color stabilizer in meat and fish. A December 2001 report from the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Food concluded that the gas (whose chemical abbreviation is "CO") did not pose a risk as long as food was kept cold enough during storage and transport to prevent microbial growth. But should the meat become inadvertently warmer at some point, it warned, "the presence of CO may mask visual evidence of spoilage."
story | MSNBC
~As a frequent consumer of case-ready packaged meats, the color of meat is the first thing I look at, the most obvious determinant of freshness. It's a bit disturbing to learn that bad meat can now look good, I did not know that.
Carbon monoxide does explain the recent mystery of the healthy-looking turkey bologna we left unopened in the fridges meat tray for over two months. I was reluctant to throw it out, to feed the raccoons. The slime kept me from opening the package and taking a whiff. I'm glad now I didn't.
People wil be getting food poisoning. Watch for a spike in hospital admissions this summer and for how many summers until enough people learn not to trust their eyes around meat?
I imagine a wholesale black-market dealing in 're-cycled' case-ready CO-treated meat?
How about warning labels for meat packages?
From the Office of the Surgeon General of the United States. Warning: Meat May Appear Fresh. Fresh Looking Meat in this Package May Not be Pathogen Free. Check Expiration Date Before Using. (and then a phone number for the CDC's hotline?)
DVDs: Digitally Obsessed
http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/index.php3
~Product news, ads & reviews: for example today Stuart Little, Leo Kottke, C.O.P.S., USC and Dick Cavett dvds are among those highlighted.
February 19, 2006
Blog: We Make Money Not Art
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/
~It'll take me a few more reincarnations to get anywhere near the aesthetic awareness found here. That is if in successive lifetimes I progessively lighten my karmic load; shed karmic debt; evolve towards cosmic consciousness; head towards the light; get better all the time.
I'm playing in the Pony Leagues, while We Make Money Not Art is Major League. Life is short; art is long.
[ad not from above]
Marine Animals Used as Ocean Sensors
Biologists and oceanographs are enlisting 23 species... to serve as ocean sensors, outfitting them with electronic tags that report on oceanographic conditions and, in many cases, transmit the data via satellite. The data yield new information about the migrations and behavior of the animals and about the North Pacific Ocean.
California sea lions with equipment
blog entry w/links | We Make Money Not Art
Lyrics: I Ride an Old Paint
I ride an old Paint
I lead an old Dan
I'm goin' to Montana
To throw the hoolihan
They feed in the coulees
They water in the draw
Their tails are all matted
And their backs are all raw
Ride around little dogies
Ride around 'em slow
For the fiery and the snuffy
Are rarin' to go
Old Bill Jones
Had two daughters and a song
One went to Denver
The other went wrong
His wife she died in a poolroom fight
And still Bill sings
From morning 'til night
Ride around little dogies
Ride around 'em slow
For the fiery and the snuffy
Are rarin' to go
When I die
Take my saddle from the wall
Put it up on my pony
Lead him out of his stall
Tie my bones to his back
Turn our faces to the west
And we'll ride the prairies
That we love the best
Ride around little dogies
Ride around 'em slow
For the fiery and the snuffy
Are rarin' to go
Ride around little dogies
Ride around 'em slow
For the fiery and the snuffy
Are rarin' to go
>related Who Knows?..."fiery & snuffy"
Poem: I Go Back to May 1937
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
Lyrics: New Paint
At the station you can meet her
With that smile you couldn’t cheat her
A woman that kind is hard to find
It’s good to take a girl
In the not so very good world
And walk in the park until it gets dark
Sometimes I feel ugly and old
Excuse me baby if I’m acting bold
My head gets hot but my feet aren’t cold
Excuse me, if you will
Take a breather on a bench
Helps to build up the suspense
Then the two of you go to a movie show
If she’s woman there’s a chance
That she maybe likes to dance
So you go to the hall and you out step ‘em all
Don’t make a hullabaloo I’m not the hoi polloi
I’ll try any trick and I’ll pull any ploy
I’m a used up twentieth century boy
Excuse me if you will
She takes you home to meet the folks
Laughing at the fathers jokes
Shall we watch TV, it’s all right with me
Time to go you’re going to miss her
In the doorway try to kiss her
Oh it tastes so good, like you hoped it would
If I was 16 again I’d give my eyetooth
I’m tired and I’m hungry and I’m looking for my youth
I’m a little uncool and I’m a little uncouth
Oh excuse me yes excuse me if you will
At the station you can meet her
With that smile you couldn’t cheat her
A woman that kind is hard to find
--Loudon Wainwright III
RUSSIA ENVIRONMENTALLY: AN INTERACTIVE MAP
Published in Russia by the non-profit environmental organization Bellona-St. Petersburg, “Environment & Rights” magazine offers extensive, in-depth analysis and news on the Russian environmental situation, as well as related legislation and the legal ways to exercise a citizen's rights to a favourable environment.
Here you can find English summaries of the magazine's articles sorted by place and date (click on the region you are interested in on the map); sometimes the short summary will have a link to a full English text.
link to map: http://www.bellona.no/en/international/ecopravo/index.html
Google News Search: Privates
~As of today and collected during the previous four weeks there are 79 stories with the word "privates"
without the words: military army schools soldiers school university
~I didn't know the word 'privates' is used to refer to schools and equity funds.
[illus. not from google news]
Google News Search: Private Army; Army Private
~As of today Google News has selected
68 news stories with the exact phrase "private army"
139 news stories with the exact phrase "army private"
~I don't believe any of the 68 "private army" stories are about an army private. That is there are no news stories about privates in private armies selected by google today.
[photo cieciel]
Google News: Private Island; Private Club; Private Home
~As of today and going back a number of weeks Google News has collected:
57 stories in which selected newspapers use the exact phrase "private island" (without the words: club, home)
343 stories in which selected newspapers use the exact phrase "private club" (without the words: home, island)
555 stories in which selected newspapers use the exact phrase "private home". (without the words: club, island)
There are over a thousand stories with the exact phrase "private homes" and more thousands with "private business" and yet more thousands with the exact phrase "private property".
Private Island for Sale @
February 18, 2006
Floating Nuclear Power Plants
The Russian State Company on electricity and heat energy production
established the department on floating nuclear plants construction...
item (1/16/06)
...the plant will be able to provide a town of 50,000 people with heating and electrical energy or be used to desalinate sea-water.
also from 2002 http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/020624.htm
Proliferation Risks & est. costs.
~Check out the estimated construction costs.
Reversing global warming promises to be radioactive and...even with science engineering fiction...expensive.
According to Google News Search there are no news stories with the exact phrase: "floating nuclear power plant". I thought "floating nuclear power plant" sounded funny. It's Russian science fiction, agitprop? There's one story, besides the above, dated Jan. 17 with the exact phrase: "floating nuclear power plants". I apologize.
Alternative Visions for US Climate Policy
for example:
A Nuclear Renaissance?
During a hearing on the 2007 Budget in the Senate Energy Committee... nuclear energy shone as a holy grail for solving both oil dependency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions even though Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman had to stress that new reactors were costly and decades down the road.
Some 19 applications for building new reactors are in the pipeline. Loan guarantees, a back-up insurance plan provided by the US Government called the Price-Andersen Act, and sponsored application procedures have stimulated the nuclear utilities. But if and when reactors will actually be built remains to be seen.
http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/41993.html | Bellona
~Nukes in the News.
Elusive Chinese Submarine Cave Spotted
A long-rumored but never before seen Chinese underground submarine base is shown for the first time in a new article written by analysts from the Federation of American Scientists and Natural Resources Defense Council. The article, published in Imaging Notes, shows newly acquired satellite images of the submarine base, three air bases, and China's nuclear weapons lab at Mianyang.
A front page article in Washington Times was headlined "Commercial photos show Chinese nuke buildup," but both the cave and submarines have existed for nearly three decades. Only now, thanks to commercial satellites, can the public see them.
blog entry w/links | Secrecy News
~Commercial satellites?
Blog: One Party State
"Democracy lives from the competition of different opinions. What happens to a democracy if there is no such difference? *
http://one-party-state.blogspot.com/
*
[photo not from blog]
Call for Papers: Boyhood Studies
BOYHOOD STUDIES will offer an interdisciplinary platform for the study of boys' lives throughout the world. We welcome critical discussions ranging through the humanities and comparative literature, anthropology, history, bioethics, and the psychological and social sciences. The journal is intended to be international in scope and not limited to contributions on boyhood in the West.
Qualitative studies and collaborative projects are welcomed..
Read online: http://www.boyhoodstudies.com/CfP.htm via GUS
February 17, 2006
Fun in the Great Outdoors
Cheap Date
Most couples have favorite restaurants, vacations resorts, or motel rooms; we have these two trees.
Electronic Wall (Of China)
"We've known for a very long time that no technology in and of itself brings either freedom or oppression. Nonetheless, this illusion has existed since the very beginnings of the Internet, the illusion that allowed us to believe that access to the diversity of information available on the Net would be enough to bring down the last remaining dictatorships. The leaders in Beijing have just proved the contrary by erecting a gigantic Electronic Great Wall of China. In the speed race between an Internet that is effectively a vector of freedom and a cyber-police endowed with the latest technology, the game is far from over. Less expected was that the big Western companies would aid the Chinese government in that effort: simultaneously by procuring for it the technology that equips its cyber-police and allows it to keep tens of millions of Internet users under surveillance and by straight-out supplying the information that allows people to be sent to jail, as well as by censoring themselves according to the desires of the Chinese Communist leaders. The little test we performed on Google and Yahoo search engines in China and in France is revealing in this regard: it would be amusing if it didn't mean quite simply that these giants of the Internet, the names of which have become synonymous with modernity and success, are capable of anything in order to get a share of the Chinese e-cake. A strong reaction in the United States would have been necessary to get these companies to talk about rules of the game. This business concerns us all - as users of this technology and of the services of these omnipresent giants - so every Internet user is not made complicit in the low blows delivered in China.
By Pierre Haski | Libération via TruthOut
~Who could've imagined Yahoo? Google? OK MSN maybe.
[illus not with editorial]
Concerned Scientists: Extracting Plutonium's Dangerous
A plan to extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel is not "proliferation resistant" despite what Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told Congress Thursday (Feb 9), a nuclear safety group said.
The Bush administration says extracting the plutonium but mixing it with other elements would discourage terrorists from stealing it. Also, the plutonium could be used again to fuel a nuclear reactor.
However, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington, D.C. advocacy group, says the plutonium and additional elements are not radioactive enough to deter terrorists who want it to make a nuclear bomb, or a "dirty" radioactive conventional bomb.
UCS says research conducted by two Energy Department scientists shows the plutonium mixture would be as vulnerable to theft as plutonium itself, because of its low level of radiation...
UCS advocates leaving the plutonium in the heavy casks of highly radioactive spent fuel to discourage theft.
press release | UPI
related:
Bush Budget Earmarks $250M for Nuclear-Fuel Reprocessing in US
link on Spitting Image (Feb.5)
Lifestyles: "I Take Illegal Drugs for Inspiration"
"Some people may smoke dope just to relax or have fun, but for me the reason goes deeper. In fact, I can honestly say that without cannabis, most of my scientific research would never have been done and most of my books on psychology and evolution would not have been written."
article by Dr. Susan Blackmore
~Dr. Susan Blackmore describes a way of looking at experiences, drug induced or otherwise, that's never been popular.
I don't take illegal drugs for anything because I can't afford to buy enough drugs to make it worthwhile for drug dealers not to turn me into the police ...or to pay for lawyers and fines if they do.
I don't understand what keeps the police dogs and truncheons from Dr. Susan Blackmore's door. Maybe it's her years at Oxford?
I also can't understand why recording artists and other celebrities here in the Homeland are free to indulge their inspirations to keep climbing. Maybe it's a class thing.
Good for you Dr. Susan Blackmore for throwing some light on a area of study now monopolized by behavioral psychologists and the pharmaceutical industries. Brava!
Imagine how crowded the mountains would be if everybody lived there.
[photo not with above]
ZNose Foundries & VOCs
...zNose(R), an electronic sensor device that can capture and analyze nearly any odor, fragrance or chemical vapor within ten seconds, has been selected by a local metal casting company for monitoring odors and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
~Nobody in Washington talks about air-quality anymore and it's verboten in the blue states...you could lose your funding...but in California new technologies are needed for new environmental laws.
They're the first ...or the best? The only?
related on Spitting Image: search results for ZNose
February 16, 2006
Blog: All Kinds of Stuff
for example:
more drawings, wisdom from cartoonist John Kricfalusi:
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/
thanks Conscientious
~Happy Happy Joy Joy.
2006 Film Festivals by Month
http://www.city.yamagata.yamagata.jp/yidff/links/links-e.html
~The Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival is in December.
(Me and my friends have tentatively scheduled The Behind the Mall Retention Pond Film Festival for October.)
Abu Ghraib Abuses Similar to Russian Army's
"A month ago or so I received a disgusting video* showing Russian
military men in training being abused. A couple of days ago I also
received an article explaining the most common abuses.
The recently released Abu Graib pics and video reminded me."
>for example
In the daytime barrel is incandensced,
at night is converted into the freezer.
"the list of the most extended methods to attain discipline":
http://www.bg.ru/article?id=5508
[Babel Fish: http://babelfish.altavista.com/]
*link to video: http://komap.net.ru/movies/2006/02/09/soversheno_sekretno-prizivniki/#full
Here's another video with different abuses against Russian recruits:
http://ru.fishki.net/pics7/dedovshina.wmv
from Priapo
~Obscuring the eyes with bars in these illustrations would intensify the figures' isolation? Somewhat different than how the bars work in the Abu Ghraib photos below? Or are bars on eyes of illustrations or photos a visual cliche?
Conference: Perspectives on Evil & Human Wickedness
for example from:
Session 1: Witches, Cannibals, and Paedophiles: Oh My!
Chair: Margaret Breen
The Splendor of Little Girls’: Social Constructions of Paedophiles and Child Sexual Abuse
Sarah Goode
Session 2: Terrorism 1: Whose Terrorism Is It?
Chair: Graeme Goldsworthy
Terrorism – Theirs and Ours
Predrag Cicovacki
Session 4: When Others Are Swept Up By Evil
Chair: Marty Norden
How Civilians Became Targets: The Moral Catastrophe of ‘Collateral Damage’
Bill Myers
Monday 13th - Friday 17th March 2006
Salzburg, Austria
complete Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers:
http://www.wickedness.net/Evil/Evil%207/prog.html
via GUS topica
~Salzburg, Mozart and wickedness oh my!
[photo not with above]
February 15, 2006
DOD Random Images
for example
http://www.usafns.com/images-dod.shtml
~See where your tax dollars have gone. (I'm saving my change to buy blankets for our area's homeless.)
When I win the lottery or get my grant, whichever comes first, right after I pay off my medical bills and get my teeth fixed I'm getting a wall-sized plasma tv and connecting it to a computer that automatically runs this DOD photo program. So I'll never forget.
From we who have so little to you who have so much.
Photo With Bush Helps "Democratic" Congressman's Rival
SAN ANTONIO -- A photo of President Bush cupping the cheeks of Rep. Henry Cuellar at last week's State of the Union address has been the gift that keeps on giving for Cuellar's chief rival for the Democratic nomination.
@The Washington Post picture of Cuellar beaming as the president holds his face is a boffo hit on the Internet, inspiring humorous-caption contests and accusations that Cuellar is a stealth Republican.
Cuellar's Democratic rival, Ciro Rodriguez, has produced a leaflet centered around the photo. It reads: "George Bush thinks Henry Cuellar is `chulo'" - Spanish slang for "pretty boy."
story \ also CQ Politics via Unknown News
~File this story under: Two Party System Is One Too Many.
maybe related:
Out Hawking Bush on Iran
Saber-rattling Evan Bayh has joined Hillary Clinton in running to Bush's right on Iran. Will this tough stance pay off in 2008 -- or backfire?
article By Walter Shapiro | Salon
thanks Conscientious for pointing out the difference between stealth Democrats and stealth Republicans.
~"Looks like the US is increasingly resembling a one-party-state where the different factions of the same powerful group compete for power, against the interests of large parts of the population. Also note how far to the right the so-called "middle of the road" solution is."
and from another email friend:
"The Republicans really do want a republic, rather like ancient Rome, complete with slaves. And one of their several simultaneous tactics has been to insert Republicans in political discourse and call them Democrats. It's devilishly brilliant.
I mean, in what sense is Joe Lieberman or Bill Clinton a Democrat? They're middle-of-the-road Republicans, but noticably to the right of middle-of-the-road real Republicans from just 10-15 years ago."
ANONYMIZER TO PROVIDE CENSOR-FREE INTERNET TO CHINA
press: release: http://www.anonymizer.com/consumer/media/press_releases/02012006.html
~I wonder what Anonymizer's legal department had to say about their company's liability from "misuse" of their "new anti-censorship solution for Chinese citizens".
related:
Researchers at a University of Toronto lab are getting ready to release a computer program called Psiphon, which will allow Internet users in free countries to help users in more restrictive countries (like China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc.) to access the Internet by getting past the firewalls and hosing "rubber hose cryptoanalysis"...
Canadians To Douse Chinese Firewall | Slashdot
[illus. falundafa\ not Anonymizer or Slashdot]
We Don't Do That Here..... or Do We?
http://www.youtube.com/v/7tie9aN4ybA
Priapo: "I'd love to see the video in context as I simply do not understand what they are supposed to be doing."
~Bob's your uncle. (Boyz in the hood?)
New Abu Ghraib Photos Revealed
Hooded Man*
#4 of 5 photos Times Gallery
The photographs and videos, which are currently the subject of a legal tug-of-war in America, were shown this morning by Dateline, [link to transcript] a current affairs show on the Australian public service broadcaster SBS.
The images showed Iraqi prisoners with severe burns and head injuries, a blood-spattered toilet, and one apparently dead man.
Naked prisoners are forced to assume humiliating poses, masturbate and are held next to barking dogs. One photograph shows several naked Iraqis in hoods, of whom one has the words "I'm a rapeist" written on this thigh.
story | Times
Photos America Doesn't Want Seen (with link to 15 photographs) | SMH
SBS' link to story with photos
~*The ghost in the "culture of service and compassion" (press release)?
Who were these tortured men? I can almost understand the Pentagon or the ACLU or the newspaper modestly obscuring their eyes, sparing us and their relatives from witnessing more of their suffering. What I don't understand is why haven't these men been identified elsewhere? A simple list of names, no photos.
Are they still in jail? Released from prison and enjoying Iraqi-style celebrity? Married with children? Dead? Emigrated to Brooklyn? Now working on the other side of the bars at the new Abu Ghraib prison?
Why don't we know their names; any of their stories beyond what's pictured here?
It's been three years. Aren't there any journalists, editors, publishers wondering "where are they now'? Or "who were they then"?
February 14, 2006
Fun
(~This frightened me at first. Now it's annoying; on its way to being embarrassing.)
Cartoon: Sorry We Missed You
Dan Frazier:
http://www.carryabigsticker.com/dans_cartoons.htm
Cheney's Victim Has Heart Attack
Cheney's Accident Has Political Echoes
The political echoes from a single shotgun blast on the Texas prairie continued to reverberate across the nation Tuesday, growing especially loud in the nation's capital as journalists scrambled to piece together the full story behind Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental Saturday shooting of a hunting companion.
[Feb. 14: The 78-year-old lawyer wounded by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident suffered a mild heart attack. NBC's David Gregory reports]
story w/video
~I don't understand the amount of press this story is generating, considering all the lying and killing this administration has done so far. It reminds me of school children at assembly reacting to the principal's public fart.
One of the H's at Unknown News observes: "I see it as a painfully vivid metaphor for everything about the Bush administration. Shoot first, then trying to bluff around any questions afterwards."
[cartoon from Slate not above]
Overheard at Starbucks
"Are there places in America where government--local, state or federal, is the main employer?"
---"Besides Washington D.C.? Certainly."
"Isn't that wrong, like socialism"?
---"It's only called socialism in socialist countries."
"Are there places where government is the only employer?"
---"Besides military bases"?
"Why are taxpayers footing the bill for areas in this country that can't sustain themselves under the natural economic laws that govern free markets everywhere? Cut all our taxes and shut those places down; give them back to the bison and timber-wolves."
---"Not everyone in the military's a fighting machine. Most of their jobs can be done by day laborers, or office temps. Why put everyone through boot-camp, make them all wear uniforms?"
"You've never went away to boarding school."
Cheney Makes Jon Stewart So Happy
"Jon, tonight the Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time-there-were-quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be the 78 year old man. Even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists-he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face.
link to video clip: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/02/13.html#a7149
thanks Conscientious
Latina Babelog
~Porn & Politics.
When I was going to college the most bootilicious, funnist girls, Latina or otherwise, were a few weeks away from breakdowns, or call girls working their way through school (and the administration) and/or police informants. I don't know why I'm mentioning this because as we all know sex is a personal matter between consenting partners. And porn is foreplay or just something to get you to the weekend. And cybersex has spawned into a lucrative STD and AIDS free sexual (i.e. masturbatory) playground. (You see what I did there, I zigged when I should have zagged.)
[photo not from Latina Babelog]
Google Image: Middle Finger
for example
Galileo's middle finger @
7,899 more photos and illlustrations of the middle finger not as heretical but perhaps more shocking and offensive
Not that I have any immediate use for these images but it's good knowing where to find them just in case. (Is this a liittle like what gun owners feel?)
February 11, 2006
Valerie Marcoux and Craig Buntin from Canada perform during the figure skating Pairs Short Program at the Torino 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy February 11, 2006. | Yahoo
Gene Doping Now?
"Evidence of gene doping has been stumbled upon at the trial of Thomas Springstein, the coach and partner of Grit Breuer, twice the European 400 metres champion... e-mails were read out in court and it was in one exchange with the doctor of a Dutch speed-skating club that the incriminating evidence was allegedly discovered.
Professor Werner Franke, a German cell biologist largely responsible for exposing those behind the drugs regimes of the former East German sports system... told The Times “We have been expecting gene doping, but not so soon,” he said. “I don’t know how they have it, but they do. This is the crossing of the Rubicon. This is a real advance in criminality.”
His reaction was matched by Michele Verroken, the director of the consultancy Sporting Integrity and former head of anti-doping at UK Sport. “When I first read about it, I thought, ‘Wow, someone’s cracked it,’” she said. “This is a really significant development.”
Repoxygen was pioneered in 2002 by Oxford Biomedica, an Oxford-based pharmaceutical company. It is a hugely significant breakthrough for the healthcare market for which it had been intended, primarily to treat serious anaemia.
While (others) attempt to pioneer a test for gene doping, the immediate question is how Repoxygen got on to the black market. While Oxford Biomedica made the Repoxygen prototype, it never went into production because the company believed that it could not compete in the pharmaceutical market where EPO was already so readily available.
Professor Alan Kingsman, Oxford Biomedica’s chief executive, said. "...it simply remains in the fridge. And we maintain very close controls, so I’d be extremely surprised if anything we made got on to the black market.”
story | Sunday Times
More from the Times:
..those who toy with gene doping to gain an illegal advantage do so at the risk of their lives. And this is not scaremongering. The fact is that, despite decades of research, only one gene therapy, in China, has been approved beyond the trial stage for use by the healthcare market.
story "Researchers Scent Blood on Trail of New Cheats"
Also Gene Doping May Crop Up in Beijing
~They're not suggesting China's more advanced in gene therapies? That a sports gene doping industry will be stimulated by the 2008 Beijing Olympics?
They're saying gene doping's not a problem for these Winter Olympics although there's no way to be certain, no definitive test?
Total Olympic Medal Count
http://www.nbcolympics.com/medals/1599001/detail.html
~I couldn't find a link to only USA Medals as featured on cable tv's "TV Guide Channel". USA! USA! USA!
Performers take part in opening ceremonies for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy Friday, Feb. 10, 2006 | Yahoo
Marylin Pla and Yannick Bonheur of France react as they see the judges' scores after their performance in the Pairs short program at the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 11, 2006. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta) | Yahoo News Photos
Winter Olympics' Opening Ceremony
(Fidos)
(Yes those are 'climbers'.)
('Multi-legged' goddess?)
(Forge)
(Motorcyclist)
(Balloon)
Artists perform during the opening ceremony of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games 10 February 2006, at the Olympic Stadium in Turin.
(Of course Ferrari.)
The Olymic Rings lights up the stadium during the opening ceremony of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, Friday, Feb. 10, 2006
(Those are people in the foreground.)
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/sm/events/sp/021006olyopeningcer/p:1
~??!!
Photos: Winter Olympics
for example
TURIN, ITALY - FEBRUARY 10: A performer roller blades with fire coming out of his helmet during the Opening Ceremony of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games on February 10, 2006 at the Olympic Stadium in Turin, Italy. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian-POOL/Getty Images)
more (98) related photos | MSNBC
~I don't get out much but is the influence of science fiction and cartoons characters finding it's way into most large-budget public events? Public events are always competing with, influenced by, the movies. Maybe the style can better be explained by the materials, used by in this case the athletes? (These two photos remind me of the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.)
Google News Search
Q. Guess how many news stories today with the exact phrase: systemic influences? or jock culture? or gendered body?
(Impossible to imagine?)
OK then, guess which of the three phrases was used the most by journalists in recent news stories collected by google?
~What rare creatures one can find on the internet; with what strange concerns.
[photo not from google news]
February 10, 2006
Song Lyric (From the Radio)
I hate every bone in her body but mine.
by Amy Rigby (lyrics & discography) \ wiki entry
2x
[illus cieciel\ not from above]
Super Bowl Tech: HD, RF, and 3D at XL
While the Detroit Police Department is technically in charge of security, the Feds and Michigan National Guard will have all the good toys, including an integrated, autonomous stationary and mobile sensor network. Besides the biological, chemical, and nuclear material sensors located throughout the facilities, National Guard personnel will be carrying concealed detectors that transmit their readings and GPS coordinates to a central location. This sensor coordination is made possible by Distributed Instruments LLC, which uses Transducer Data Exchange Protocol (TDXP) for plug-and-play sensor compatibility on top of the open-source OSGi Service Platform. Sony and OQO handhelds will also be used by several dozen Guards during the game for communications and keeping track of the data flow.
... of course the Super Bowl will sport the usual array of visible mounted cams along with miniature cams hidden on roaming personnel and even pavement cams to monitor the underside of vehicles... all of these security cameras will transmit their feeds to surveillance vans, where software and hardware from Intrepid Defense & Security Systems will render 3D holographic views from the footage. As you might expect, everyone entering the game will be subject to patdowns, metal detectors, and dog-sniffing, and all 16,000 people working at the game were subjected to criminal background checks (so if you don't see some of your favorite players today, you'll know why).
press release | Engadget
~Being modern means being monitored and being a football star means you probably can't pass a Homeland Security background check.
Looking for Lies in All the Wrong Places
"...there are scads of programs offered to law enforcement agencies around the country, all of which claim to teach cops (and anyone else willing to pay the tuition) how to detect deception.
Avram Sapir's Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN) program is one of them. Curious about it, I paid my $350 and took his week-long seminar about a ten years ago. It's an odd mixture of the techniques used by the FBI, called Statement Analysis, and a hopeful but largely misguided use of some of the good work coming out of Paul Ekman's laboratory in San Francisco. Mix in a touch of the Reid Technique, stir well, and you can teach the police how to tell when suspects are lying.
I found SCAN, Statement Analysis, and the Reid technique amusingly optimistic and often downright frightening. But they are hot items in our nation's police departments."
complete post by Robert Shuy | Language Log