March 31, 2006
The Wisdom of Sharon Stone
"Hillary Clinton is fantastic. But I think it is too soon for her to run. This may sound odd, but a woman should be past her sexuality when she runs. Hillary still has sexual power and I don't think people will accept that. It is too threatening [1]
I was 40 at birth. I spoke when I was less than a year old. Then I started school and drove everybody crazy because they realized I had adult questions and wanted adult answers [2]
It's traumatizing for me to come to Washington during a Republican
administration because I don't have any Republican clothes [3]
People just are sitting there going, like, 'I don't care what she's saying, I don't care what she's saying, I just want to know, does she
get naked in that movie? Is she naked? Nude? Nude? Naked? Do I see her boobies? I don't care what she's saying, I don't care, I don't care, is she naked?' So let's just get through to that ... YES! [4]
I am off the idea of therapy. I think all shrinks are crazy [5]
I believe that if you truly, truly love your children, you need to supply condoms in a place in your home, at a quantity that makes it a
non-judgmental situation for them to have them. I mean put 200 condoms in a box in some place in the house where everybody isn't all the time so that your kids can take them [6]
To really achieve any level of greatness, you have to be willing to say yes no matter who says no, and to say no no matter who says yes [7]
If you act like you know what you're doing, you can do anything you
want -- except neurosurgery [8]
Young people talk to me about what to do if they're being pressed for sex. I tell them (what I believe): Oral sex is a hundred times safer than vaginal or anal sex. 'If you're in a situation where you cannot get out of sex, offer a blow job.' I'm not embarrassed to tell them." [9].
Sources: 1) Associated Press, 3/28/2006; 2) Scottish Daily Record,
4/6/1995; 3) Washington Post, 6/20/2001; 4) Middle East Press Conference, 3/9/2006; 5) New York Daily News, 3/29/2006; 6) Associated Press, 12/1/1998; 7) Sydney Daily Telegraph, 10/26/2000; 8) Melbourne Herald Sun, 11/30/2002; 9) www.contactmusic.com, 3/28/2006
>No url.
from Joerg
~From the above guess which one has the Little Green Football munchers, the Instafundits and Michelle Malkins all-a-twitter? Just guess.
CA Highschool American Flag Vandalism
Busted
"What are the odds that the guilty student and his/her collaborators are here illegally? And the odds that anyone will do anything about it?" *
A student protest that resulted in a Mexican flag being flown on top of an upside-down U.S. flag at a local school has prompted disciplinary action against one El Rancho High School student.
*blog entry | Michelle Malkin
~The horror! The horror! (The hypocrisy.)
>related:
"Under Sensenbrenner anti-immigrant bill HR 4437... eight million to twelve million people would be subject to immediate arrest and imprisonment.
All undocumented immigrants, all immigrants with visa violations, 1.5 million of their children, their families, their lawyers, their doctors, and the good Samaritans who aid them will become guilty of an aggravated felony. So if you give your co-worker a ride home, or you provide medical aid in your capacity as a health care worker, or you buy dinner for a friend who can't prove their citizenship, or you put a bottle of water in the desert to keep someone from dehydrating, you're a felon facing prison. Not to mention the person you assisted. Everyone arrested would be incarcerated. And, just for good measure, legal residents would waive their right to a hearing if their visa is in violation.
Local police forces will receive "inherent authority" and funding to turn over immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If local law enforcement has responsibility for immigration violations, every darker-skinned person--Meso-American, Southwest Asian, Middle Eastern, African--will become suspect just for walking past a cop. Whole communities will fade into an underground culture and economy."
more from the article "The Conscience of a Nazi and What Immigration Reform Means"
~Immigration reform is THE issue for this year's Congressional elections? (and for years to come?) The Republicans can keep their majority in the House by pushing the creation of 12 million new felons? Over-riding their party's corruption scandals, their lies about WMDs, the deaths in Iraq, the Bushies mismanagement of hurricane relief, gas prices and a stagnant economy?
(I think they can. I think they have the will and the discipline to serve it up in a big stinking-steaming bowl. And I believe the majority of Americans will get in line to gratefully gobble every last bit of it up. "Please sir, can I have some more sir?")
Photo-caption Non Sequitur
Who do you see? Who do you watch?
Who's your leader? Which is your flock?
Who do you watch? Who do you watch?
Who's your leader? Which is your flock?
Who do you watch?
[photo google\ caption Crass' "Where Next Coumbus?"]
Marc Maron Quotes
I'm not completely sure we aren't all living in a hallucination now.
The 'liberal' idea makes room for the bare desperation of what it is to be alive in this world, for the underdog and those who struggle for justice but don't want to live in the fear that breeds hate and blame and the exclusion of everything different. Humility! That's funny.
We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.
more:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/marc_maron.html
Surveillance in the Sky:
Homeland Security wants aerial drones with cameras
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have long been used over Iraq and
Afghanistan. Now local police and Homeland Security want to use them in the U.S. for aerial surveillance.
This raises two interesting issues: privacy and safety...
Summary of a House hearing ...
article w/links | Politech
photos of unmanned aircraft | Cnet
>Spitting Image search results for drone
[Predator photo defense link]
March 30, 2006
2xRobert Irwin Quotations
Any tool you use is legitimate. The key to the tool is whether it has the dimensions to deal with what have become your questions. I consider art as a thought form more than anything else.7
My art has never been about ideas. . . . My interest in art has never been about abstraction; it has always been about experience. . . . My pieces were never meant to be dealt with intellectually as ideas, but to be considered experientially.8
There is an essential kind of knowing, which comes from a purely phenomenological basis.9
more:
http://www.diabeacon.org/exhibs/irwin/excursus/quotes.html
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia & the Archdiocese of Boston
Antonin Scalia gestures inside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. (Herald exclusive photo by Peter A. Smith)
"It’s inaccurate and deceptive of him to say there was no vulgarity in the moment,” said Peter Smith, the Boston University assistant photojournalism professor who made the shot.
Despite Scalia’s insistence that the Sicilian gesture was not offensive and had been incorrectly characterized by the Herald as obscene, the photographer said the newspaper “got the story right.”
Smith said the jurist “immediately knew he’d made a mistake, and said, ‘You’re not going to print that, are you?’ ”
Scalia’s office yesterday referred questions regarding the flap to Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg, who said a letter Scalia sent Tuesday to the Herald defending his gesture at the cathedral “speaks for itself.”
story | thanks Conscientious
~A lush AND a liar? What a class act. A real stand-up guy. What would Sinatra do?
This is one of the things I hate about Republicans; it's easier for them to lie then apologize.
Be a man: tell the truth and apologize; what could be simpler?
Update
: "A freelance photographer (Paul Smith) has been fired by the Archdiocese of Boston’s newspaper for releasing a picture of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia making a controversial gesture in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Sunday.
The weekly Catholic newspaper made a “journalistic decision” not to run or release the photo, said Archdiocese spokesman Terry Donilon. “Because he breached that trust with the editor, we will no longer engage his services as a freelance photographer,” Donilon said.
“It’s nothing personal,” added Pilot editor Antonio Enrique. “I need to try and find people I can trust.”
While news outlets from across the country sought Smith’s photo... the archdiocese said there’s no proof that Scalia uttered an obsenity in the church. Smith said Scalia said, “To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” while making the gesture. That’s Italian for (expletive) you.
Overheard at Starbucks
"She thought she'ld survive by not wanting what everyone else wanted. She was sure they'ld leave her alone. She couldn't see what a target she'd become."
---"Let that be a lesson for us all."
"Studies have shown stealing has survival value. We may be hard-wired to steal."
---"Three of the ten commandments are about stealing or coveting."
"Killing is stealing."
---"With prayer, the right diet and the right attitude anyone can overcome those urges."
"Stop it you're making me blush."
Blue Star PR
"The Jewish Ink Tank"
more posters/ comments: http://www.bluestarpr.com/gallery.php
Photo-caption non Sequitur
Who do you see? Who do you watch?
Who's your leader? Which is your flock?
Who do you watch? Who do you watch?
Who's your leader? Which is your flock?
[photo google\ caption Crass' "Where Next Coumbus?"]
American Hostage Jill Carroll Freed in Iraq
‘I was treated well,’ reporter says of nearly three-month ordeal*.
American reporter Jill Carroll speaks to media after her release from captivity at the Islamic Party Headquarters Thursday March 30, 2006 in Baghdad in this image taken from video. Carroll, who was kidnapped three months ago in a bloody ambush that killed her translator, was released from captivity Thursday and said she had been treated well. (AP Photo/Baghdad TV via APTN) | Yahoo
Carroll said she was kept in a comfortable room and could wash easily but could not move beyond the immediate confines of her accommodation.
Carroll, 28, was handed over to the Iraqi Islamic Party office in Amiriya, western Baghdad, by an unknown group. She was later turned over to the Americans and was believed to be in the heavily fortified Green Zone.
~*Yes but they made this journalist wear this costume before she could be released? Dressing a hostage up in anything other than restraints seems like an unnecessary extravagance. The video was taken before Jill Carroll got to the Green Zone; she was in the Islamic Party office at the time? The Iraqis never heard of jeans and a sweatshirt? Is there traditional or religious clothing for Iraq's male hostages too? All released foreign hostages are given by their kidnappers or Iraqi authorities a Koran and a fruit basket as parting-gifts.
No photographs of Jill Carroll when she first arrived in the Green Zone were taken; have been released; will ever be released? Any of her smiling on the phone, or soon after a shower, a change of clothes, a meal?
Kidnappers use cameras as weapons.
Any statements or acknowledgments from the American military concerning hostages only encourages more kidnappings, other demands?
Jill Carroll will be very much in demand.
"Immediate confines of her accomodation"--doesn't that read like a bad translation, or does Jill Carroll speak that way?
"Believed to be in the heavily fortified Green Zone"---doesn't this say more than it should about America's presence in Iraq?
Released hostages in the presence of media can say the darnedest things. Better to give them time to understand their lives are not in danger, their words can no longer condemn them (..to death, that is).
Jill Carroll Update | Christian Science Monitor
Did she have to sign-over to her captors a percentage of her earnings from upcoming book sales, media appearances and movie rights? Did she promise the kidnappers or her agent she'ld wear these clothes everytime she appears in public?
Spitting Image's links to Jill Carroll
>Update: Questioning Jill Carroll | Michelle Malkin
~Media whores at work.
March 29, 2006
Biscuits Anyone?
...BISCUITS - Behavioral Science Consultation Teams - consist of military psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral scientists, and other health care professionals. Their role, it has been charged by former Guantánamo interrogators, is to advise the military on ways of increasing psychological duress on detainees, sometimes using their medical records to find ways of exploiting their fears and phobias, to make them more cooperative and willing to provide information.
The DOD has said that there is very limited access to prisoners' medical records. But many members of the health care community remain skeptical.
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine said interviews with doctors who helped devise and supervise the interrogation regimen at Guantánamo showed that the BISCUIT program was explicitly designed to increase fear and distress among detainees as a means of obtaining intelligence."
article: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032806A.shtml
by William Fisher
[photo google not from truthout]
~How about a updated version of MASH? Instead of Korea the 4077 could be stationed in Guantanamo or a prison in Iraq or Afghanistan. Every week Hawkeye's grandson, now a shrink, in the midst of complaining about the boredom, playing practical jokes on his fellow BSCTs, and dealing with a military bureaucracy that doesn't have a clue, shows how nameless detainees are getting the best possible care?
"What's a shrink supposed to do with ten cases of tongue depressors? I requisitioned prayer-rugs." Cue laugh-track.
Saudi Arabia Working on Secret Nuclear Program With Pakistan Help
BERLIN (AFX) - Saudi Arabia is working secretly on a nuclear program, with help from Pakistani experts, the German magazine Cicero reported in its latest edition, citing Western security sources.
Cicero... also quoted a US military analyst, John Pike, as saying that Saudi bar codes can be found on half of Pakistan's nuclear weapons 'because it is Saudi Arabia which ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear program.'
The magazine also said satellite images indicate that Saudi Arabia has set up a program in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh, a secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles.
According to some Western security services, long-range Ghauri-type missiles of Pakistani-origin are housed inside the silos.
http://www.forbes.com/finance/feeds/afx/2006/03/28/afx2629000.html
thanks Joerg
~Looks like even if America or Israel destroys Iran's nuclear capabilities, Muslims in the Middle East will have the Bomb. (The Saudi's are our allies?)
When are their oil reserves expected to dry up?
Net Art Open 2006
"Submissions are now invited for the fourth edition of the Stunned Net Art Open.
The Net Art Open takes a different approach to the curation of Net Art online. Rather then present a single event based exhibition selected by a curator or panel of selectors the Net Art Open is an ongoing blog based process delivered by RSS feed. Curatorial bias has been removed by accepting all work which meet the criteria The result is a true reflection of the state of Net Art now."
(Closing date for the first call is April 20)
http://stunned.org/netartopen/
http://stunned.org/netartopen/2004/
[links to recent entries on the right] from Rhizome
Congress Moves to Bar States from Making Food Safer
Earlier this month, the House of Representatives, with a bipartisan majority, passed a bill that would require uniform labeling of products. It prohibits states from having standards that are "not identical" to the federal government's.
The House held no public hearings. It quietly voted for the change during the week Washington was consumed by the Dubai ports deal.
story | Yahoo
~Mmmmmm federally approved food reform.
The savings food manufacturers will reap from this law are sure to be passed on to us the consumers!
Sewage Tested for Signs of Cocaine
Fairfax (County, VA) Participating In Federal Program To Assess Drug Use
"We think it will be very, very useful," (David Murray, special assistant to national drug czar John P. Walters)...said.
press release WashPost from Unknown News
~"Want a taste?"
I'm waiting for the DEA to send their drug-sniffing dogs into bank vaults and use that 'evidence' to begin extensive investigations. They could start in Governor Bush's Florida.
South Carolina Senate Approves Death Penalty for Child Molesters
It would authorize prosecutors to seek capital punishment for any sex offender convicted twice of raping children younger than eleven.
The plan is part of a larger bill that would set minimum sentences for sex offenders and require lifetime electronic monitoring for some of them.
Opponents say the measure would be unconstitutional. But the U-S Supreme Court declined to review a Louisiana law that allows the death penalty for people who rape children younger than 12.
State Senator Jake Knotts, chief backer of the South Carolina bill, says criminals who rape children don't belong on earth.
~I wonder what the penalties are for incest in South Carolina and Louisiana: a mandatory life sentence, chemical castration?
HH at Unknown News comments: "There's no politician on earth I'd trust with the decision of who belongs on earth and who doesn't.
And there's nothing worthwhile accomplished by killing child molesters that isn't accomplished by life in prison... except, of course, the inevitable execution of innocent people."
Deadly Roads Memorials
"Approximately 371 people have been killed so far this year by hit and run drivers in the US."*
from Sensible Erection
March 28, 2006
Arcadia Redesigned
The landscape changes dramatically not only through industrialisation, urbanisation, globalisation and polution but also by "recreational gardeners" who create there own fictional arcadia.
“While looking at these front yards and gardens it occurred to me that the fragments I was photographing could be felt and experienced as a modern day Arcadia. The owners themselves undoubtedly derive great pleasure from their creations, but if you put all these pieces of ‘Arcadia’ together in your imagination on a global scale, you encounter an enormously cultivated and surreal landscape.”
gallery: http://www.hermanvandenboom.net/index.php?page=2004-2005_arcadiaredesign by Herman Van den Boom
from Conscientious
Lucifire
"Grotesque Burlesque Pyrotica"
>for example...
Angie Grinding
from Aberrant News
~I once knew a woman who could do amazing things with a cuisinart.
Art and Camouflage: An Annotated Bibliography
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/spec.projects/camouflagebib.html
Compiled by Roy R. Behrens
@
BNAs WebWatch Reading Room
"Here you will find links to government, industry, and academic resources on selected topics spanning the breadth of BNA coverage. New subjects will be posted weekly, and new resources will also be added to existing topics.
Note that when you choose a topic from the left column (for example, "Bioterrorism" or "Prescription Drug Costs"), the right column will automatically display the specific BNA publications providing timely news and analysis in this area. Please sign up for a trial of the publication(s) of your choice, at no charge."
http://www.bna.com/webwatch/index.html
~The topics on the left give an overview of small government at work. I'm guessing one may be able to find (in a few hours) through google or other search engines information similar to BNAs publications.
Lifestyles: Only 30 out of more than 180,000 Millionaires Faced Traditional IRS Audits Last Year
March 28: Analysis of IRS data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) further indicates that the audit rate for America's wealthiest taxpayers is substantially lower than for the poorest.
lgIt is not known whether the very low rate of face-to-face audits for millionaires reported in FY 2005 -- less than 2 out of 10,000 -- is new or whether the policy has been followed in previous years.
http://trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/current/
US Taser Deaths Up
WASHINGTON -- The number of people who have died in the U.S. after being shocked by police stun guns is growing rapidly, Amnesty International says in a report that catalogs 156 in the past five years.
Deaths after the use of Taser stun guns have risen from three in 2001 to 61 last year...
Police had used Tasers more than 70,000 times as of last year, Congress' Government Accountability Office said.
Taser has said that more than 9,000 lives have been saved because police officers have been able to use stun guns instead of bullets. Tasers deliver a 50,000-volt jolt through two barbed darts that can penetrate clothing.
Many of those who died were high on drugs*, mentally ill or otherwise agitated. Many deaths in the past year occurred after victims were hit by Tasers at least three times and, in some cases, for prolonged periods, the report said.
press release also Amnesty
>related on Spitting Image taser search results
~(*Buzz kill.) World Taser-Deaths Remain Stable?
I didn't know tasers killed anyone. According to Amnesty Intl. there's already fourteen US taser-deaths this year. While according to Taser stun-guns have saved the lives of thousands of people police have gotten close enough to taser instead of shooting.
Whatever happened to the-men-in-white-coats with their "butterfly nets"? (Reaganomics?)
By now every cop in America knows you have to taser some perps a couple of times in order to subdue them. No matter what the manufacturer says or how they were trained, one jolt just doesn't do it anymore?
No American universities are doing research on taser-related deaths?
@
[photo google: "taser death" \ not Amnesty]
March 27, 2006
Chinese Public Health Posters
http://clendening.kumc.edu/dc/cp/index.html [25 posters]
~No dates given.
Lyrics: You Gotta Move
You gotta move
You gotta move
You gotta move, child
You gotta move
Oh, when the Lord gets ready
You gotta move
You may be high
You may be low
You may be rich, child
You may be poor
But when the Lord gets ready
You gotta move
You see that woman
Who walks the street
You see that police
Upon his beat
But then the Lord gets ready
You gotta move
You gotta move
---F. McDowell
The Thomas Butler Affair
THE THOMAS BUTLER AFFAIR
"Dr. Thomas C. Butler is one of the rather few people in the history
of humanity of whom it can be truly said that he helped to save millions of lives. A specialist in the plague and other infectious diseases, his research helped lead to the adoption of oral hydration as a standard treatment for diarrhea in the Third World
and elsewhere.
But in post-9/11 America, Dr. Butler is also a convicted criminal.
Because he apparently committed certain violations of the laws governing the transport of toxic agents used in his medical research, he was investigated and prosecuted as if he were a potential terrorist. In 2004, he was sentenced to a term of two years in prison, which he recently completed.
The strange tale of Dr. Butler is explored this week in an exhaustive seven-part series in the Cleveland Plain Dealer beginning March 26. See "Plagued by Fear" reported by John Mangels here:
http://www.cleveland.com/plague/
Some related material in support of Dr. Butler from the Federation of American Scientists is available here:
http://www.fas.org/butler/index.html" | Secrecy News
ARMY ISSUES NEW MANUAL ON UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS
The U.S. Army has issued a new manual on unmanned aerial systems
(UAS), which are increasingly used in a wide spectrum of reconnaissance, surveillance and targeting missions.
UAS include what were formerly referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), plus their payloads and support systems.
The new Army manual includes fresh information on Army UAS programs and operations.
A copy of the unclassified manual was obtained by Secrecy News.
See "Army Unmanned Aircraft System Operations," Field Manual Interim FMI 3-04.155, dated 4 April 2006 (183 pages in a large 9 MB PDF file):
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fmi3-04-155.pdf
from Secrecy News March 27.
[UAV photo Defense Link (USAF)\ not above)
Great Buildings Architecture Online
http://www.greatbuildings.com/pix/picture_index_010.html
~Many photos and digital illustrations.
[not a Great Building from above
(a Carnegie-funded library in Illinois)
Blog: Improvisations
Arab Woman Progressive Voice
http://www.arabwomanprogressivevoice.blogspot.com/
[photo google\ not Improvisations]
Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG)
The Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) is a freely available Internet service which aims to provide a trusted source of selected, high quality Internet information for students, academics, researchers and practitioners in the social sciences, business and law. It is part of the UK Resource Discovery Network.
SOSIG Internet Catalogue
The SOSIG Internet Catalogue is an online database of high quality Internet resources. It offers users the chance to read descriptions of resources available over the Internet and to access those resources directly. The Catalogue points to thousands of resources, and each one has been selected and described by a librarian or academic. The catalogue is browsable or searchable by subject area.
>check out SOSIGs Most Popular Sites (Updated Weekly)
thanks Diederik
~Few get funds for research but anyone with practice can be a practitioner.
[illus. google\ not sosig]
March 26, 2006
Comics: Timing 1
Timing attempts to explore and document a few of the instinctual manipulations and realizations of time through dissection of visual and textual timelines existing on the two-dimensional page. It can be used as a simple guide to time manipulation, or enjoyed as an insight into the instinctual time travel that exists within the human mind.
>for example:
The images in the diagram below are enclosed in panels, thus becoming a sequence. The viewer subconsciously recognizes the panel, reads the images as a sequence, and is consequently moved through time
article by Joanna Estep from The Morning Improv
US Man Charged with Attempting to Export Sensors to Iran
LOS ANGELES-A computer technician was charged with attempting to export to Iran more than 100 pressure sensors that could be misused as components in explosive devices, federal authorities said.
Mohammad Fazeli, 27, pleaded not guilty to the three-count indictment charging him with conspiracy, making false statements and violating a U.S. embargo prohibiting trade with Iran.
The sensors are built to detect the pressure of liquid or gas, but federal investigators are concerned that they could be misused to detonate explosive devices.
story | FindLaw
~I wondered why sensors might be embargoed trade.
Hearing the Highway
Hearing The Highway
In the 1972 BBC documentary 'Reyner Banham Loves California,' the architectural critic pops an 8-track cassette into his car stereo and begins a guided voyage around Los Angeles. A pleasant voice directs Banham to iconic sites like the Watts Towers, while Banham directs us to the 'real' Los Angeles comprised of strip clubs and mini-malls. With the growing accessibility of audio distribution methods, from cheaply-produced CDs to podcasts, audio tours have become a prime vehicle for artists and activists. A new large-scale project entitled 'Invisible 5' explores the potential of such guides to critically engage space. Created by a collective of California-based artists and organizations, including Amy Balkin, Kim Stringfellow, Tim Halbur, Greenaction, and Pond, 'Invisible 5' presents the voices of writers, scholars, and activists telling the stories of communities and their struggles for environmental justice along the major North-South interstate in California. Starting ! this April, the tours will be available for download, so you can embark on your own guided voyage into the 'real' California. - Ryan Griffis | NetArt News
~Can I-PODS be prompted (is that the right word?) by GPS readings? If so anyone with a cd collection, a microphone, a few hundred bucks (a few thousand?) and some good ideas can create audio guides (audio fictions!) for anywhere GPS goes and environmental sounds and commentary...voice-overs and soundtracks!...for real-time environments. Fantastic.
Is this the beginning of a new interactive medium or just better (i.e. more) travel guides?
Web Art: Oil Standard
Oil Standard is a web browser plug-in that converts all prices from U.S. Dollars into the equivalent value in barrels of crude oil.
Artist's Oily Alchemy
If, in contemporary economics, the gold standard is no longer a viable model, users of Michael Mandiberg's new browser plug-in may believe that oil is the new currency par excellence. The American artist's 'Oil Standard' seamlessly 'converts all prices from U.S. Dollars into the equivalent value in barrels of crude oil,' on webpages. These values are updated in real time, according to the fluctuating price of oil on the commodities exchange, so that one always knows the relative cost of that new iPod or weekend getaway. As is typical of the artist who digitized Sherry Levine's 'After Walker Evans' series to bring internet users the 'After Sherry Levine' project, 'Oil Standard' is rife with ironic references. The concatenation of the gold standard, the Standard Oil company, and the project's title, in his personal statement, kick-starts the wordplay that makes Mandiberg's choice to write his project in the oily-sounding Greasemonkey Mozilla Firefox script all the more wi! tty. And perhaps it does take a sense of humor to contemplate the crude equivalent of one's weekly lunch allowance in oil, considering the effect that this new currency is having on current affairs. - Marisa Olson | NetArtNews
http://turbulence.org/Works/oilstandard/
Overheard at Starbucks
"What day of the week do most people have sex?"
---"Around here? Saturday."
"Saturday night...of course."
---"I think more goes on Saturday afternoon...when working husbands and wives have unscheduled time to run their errands and the kids are at mall or the movies. The people around here can't afford weekly playboy-style key parties."
""Sorry I'm late but there was a long line at the...ah...hardware store, supermarket, post office?""
---"Exactly...
By the way according to the Rockefeller Foundation quickies with strangers are more family-positive than swinging with acquantances. There's already enough divorces over money problems.
Google's Wi-Fi Privacy Ploy
Dozens of communities large and small, in red states and blue, are either planning or currently constructing Wi-Fi systems. Community leaders...recognize that creating a citywide Wi-Fi zone is not only vital for economic development and public safety but helps insure that Americans who can't now afford digital communications on their own can also tap in to the riches and convenience of the Internet. But there is no such thing as a free digital lunch.
Consumers and public officials should have no illusions that what is being touted as a public benefit is also designed to spur the growth of a mobile marketing ecosystem, an emerging field of electronic commerce that is expected to generate huge revenues for Google, Microsoft, AT&T and many others. Soon, wherever we wander, a ubiquitous online environment will follow us with ads and information dovetailed to our interests and our geographic location.
Unless municipal leaders object, citizens and visitors will be subjected to intensive data-mining of their web searches, e-mail messages and other online activities are tracked, profiled and targeted. The inevitable consequences are an erosion of online privacy, potential new threats of surveillance by law enforcement agencies and private parties, and the growing commercialization of culture.
article | The Nation
~Big Brother, Big Sister and their marketing friends need to know what you and your machines are looking at.
>not related: Intrusion Detection Systems Lab Publications
Blog: Project on Government Oversight
for example this article Nuclear Waste
~Get the skinny on how they're skinning us.
Leafy Sea Dragon
http://www.divegallery.com/Leafy_Sea_Dragon.htm
thanks Diederik
~They taste a little like kombu.
March 25, 2006
3xSprinking RFID Sensor Tags from the Sky
The sensor tags will be used to collect various information about a disaster -- perhaps most importantly, if anyone is alive. The tags are about several centimeters wide/high and equipped with heat, infrared, and vibration sensors.
...about 10,000 tags will be needed to cover an area as large as a big airport.
They (the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication)aim at finishing their technology R&D by 2007 (and deploying the technology in the "real" world.)
item | Corante.com
New Sensor Detects Chemical, Biological, Nuclear and Explosive Materials
Argonne electrical engineers have successfully performed the first-ever remote detection of chemicals and identification of unique explosives spectra using a spectroscopic technique that uses the properties of the millimeter/terahertz frequencies between microwave and infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum. The researchers used this technique to detect spectral "fingerprints" that uniquely identify explosives and chemicals.
The Argonne-developed technology was demonstrated in tests that accomplished three important goals:
-- Detected and measured poison gas precursors 60 meters away in the Nevada Test Site to an accuracy of 10 parts per million using active sensing.
-- Identified chemicals related to defense applications, including nuclear weapons, from 600 meters away using passive sensing at the Nevada Test Site.
-- Built a system to identify the spectral fingerprints of trace levels of explosives, including DNT, TNT, RDX and plastics explosives semtex and C-4.
Millimeter-wave radar images taken 9 km from a nuclear power plant can detect when the plant is operating (upper image) or idling (lower image).
press release | Phys.org
Michigan to Require Abortion Providers to Offer Ultrasound
Governor to sign bill mandating offer of ultrasound images before abortions
LANSING, Mich. - Gov. Jennifer Granholm will sign a bill requiring abortion providers to give pregnant women the option to see ultrasound images of their fetuses, a spokeswoman says.
Granholm generally has opposed anti-abortion legislation, but the bill was amended so it no longer requires pregnant women to see the ultrasound images, spokeswoman Liz Boyd said Sunday.
Until now, Michigan law has required that women seeking abortions be allowed to review diagrams and descriptions showing a developing fetus, but not their own.
somewhat related this article:
"The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion"
~Women's bodies as battlegrounds...I know that's a cliche...but I just got in my head the image of tiny satellites revolving around women's bellies as they walk down city streets, in shopping malls, parking lots, etc.
The remote viewing capabilities of these miniature satellites making certain the state has up to the minute estimates of its nation's baby-making facilities; active, inactive and decommissioned.
Underfire Discussion:
The Organization and Representation of Political Violence
Under Fire is an ongoing art and research project that explores contemporary militarization and political violence. It delves into the structural, symbolic, and affective dimensions of contemporary armed conflicts: the organization, representation, and materialization of war.
This session of Under Fire will focus on the status of political speech -- the operations of power that determine the legitimacy of action, and the conditions that render speech and action intelligible as a political force.
From this basis, it will explore the dynamic between politics and violence and look at the way that new political spaces are opened or invented. Overall, it will foreground structural conditions of the new global landscape, exploring the nature of contemporary power and situating cycles of violence within the modalities of a global system.
Datum: Sonntag, 26. März 2006, 19 Uhr Ort: Galerie der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Rosenthaler Str. 40/41, Berlin-Mitte
In englischer Sprache
Eintritt frei
presentations by Anselm Franke, Brian Holmes, Thomas Keenan and Gema Martin Munoz; moderated by Jordan Crandall
In cooperation with KW Institute for Contemporary Art
For further information on Under Fire, including archives of past discussions, please visit http://jordancrandall.com/underfire
[illus. not with above]
March 24, 2006
United States Munitions
A guide to the missiles, bombs, and mines used by the US military.
http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=325&projectId=21
~With 'quantities current & planned' and 'unit costs' among other statistics.
[photo not from FAS]
Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq:
Effects and Countermeasures
Summary
Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are responsible for many of the more than 2,000 deaths and numerous casualties suffered by U.S. and coalition forces since the invasion of Iraq. The bombs have been hidden behind signs and guardrails, under roadside debris, or inside animal carcasses, and encounters with IEDs are becoming more numerous and deadly. The threat has expanded to include vehicle-borne IEDs, where insurgents drive cars laden with explosives directly into a targeted group of service members. DOD efforts to counter IEDs have proven only marginally effective, and U.S. forces continue to be exposed to the threat at military checkpoints, or whenever riding in vehicles in Iraq. DOD reportedly expects that mines and IEDs will continue to be weapons of choice for insurgents for the near term in Iraq, and is also concerned that they might eventually become more widely used by other insurgents and terrorists worldwide. This report will be updated as events warrant.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RS22330.pdf (6p)
| CRS Report for Congress from Secrecy News
Soldiers from the U.S. Armyís 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, line up mortar shells, anti-tank, anti-personnel, and anti-aircraft rounds found in a weapons cache near Rawah, Iraq, on Feb. 20, 2006. The munitions will be destroyed in order to prevent their use by insurgents in improvised explosive devices. DoD photo by Lance Cpl. Andrew D. Young, U.S
[photo & caption Defense Link\ not from above links]
~One might wonder how many of these shells were sold to Saddam by US corporations?
[Kiddy-toy IED photo from google]
Overheard at Starbucks
"The voices in her head stopped screeching when she learned to do what they said....it was like a religious experience.
...nothing crazy, nothing unreasonable, they're pro-American and anti-crime.
Her headaches went away too.
There're others like her: guided by voices.
They work together, on call 24-hours-a-day.
No need to speak to each other...
She's never lonely, she's no longer afraid: the voices keep her safe."
---"As long as she does what they say?"
March 23, 2006
Hats
A model wears a creation by designer Steven Sin Kim Wae during a catwalk show at the Alternative Fashion Week at Spitalfields Market in London March 20, 2006. REUTERS/Stephen Hird |Yahoo
~People don't wear hats anymore. I missed those years when women wore hats. Or is that just an idea (a false memory!) I got from movies like "Annie Hall"? Can people be nostalgic for a past that never was?
This hat reminds me of a cornucopia.
There are colors in clothing women wear that would make a man's skin burn.
Men can wear horns but nothing that resembles a horn-a-plenty.
Women are delicious while men at most are tasty?
Women are nourishment, men are beasts of burden.
Small hats on big heads are always funny.
The Tween Queens
Little girls and big girl relationships
Abstract:
Aspiring actresses. Starlets. Baby harlots. Cheap cuties. Dolls.
Ingénues. Throughout cinema history, Hollywood's young female actresses, who often project a sophistication and social savvy far beyond their years, have created a legacy. Following in the allure of many before are the Tween Queens, the group of actresses driving a contemporary, cinematic mini-explosion. So-called because of their positive reception with tweens, American females between the ages of 8 and 14, teenaged Tween Queens rely on a mature image to drive formulaic narratives that prioritize romantic intrigue. The films' emphases on body image create role models who are necessarily beautiful or enveloped in a physical transformation that will result in an unveiling moment before an accepting, attractive male. Relationships with parents, peers, and self, meanwhile, are undermined. Through the careful crafting of persona, the young actresses have secured themselves as today's cinematic nymphets, however puerile their portrayed approaches to love may be.
by Riley, Rosemary McKeon, M.A., University of Colorado at Boulder,
2005, 103 pages
Fulltext via Proquest. btw this is the second thesis with the phrase
last year. (cf. "Somewhere in-between: Tween queens and the marketing machine" by Guthrie).
[object added to GUS Digital Archive]
[illus. google\ not from above links]
~Are there "drag-tweens"?
Lifestyles: Dick Cheney's Suite Demands
After posting the performance contracts of artists like Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, and U2, The Smoking Gun has finally obtained the backstage demands of a real rock star. That's right, below you'll find a copy of Vice President Dick Cheney's standard "tour" rider. The document is provided to hotels where Cheney will be bunking and lists how the Republican pol's "Downtime Suite" needs to be outfitted.
thanks Joerg who points out: "the televisions need to be preset to the Fox News Channel".
~No live mice?
Medical Image Databases
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/new.htmld/lgr_medimages.shtml#one
via Dartmouth College Library
[illus, cieciel\ not from above]
Study: Depression Drugs Work in Half of the Patients
According to government statistics, depression afflicts 15 million Americans a year. About 189 million prescriptions for antidepressants were written last year and the disease costs the nation $83 billion annually because of treatment costs, lost productivity, absenteeism and suicide.
It is troubling that large numbers of patients continued to have problems (David Rabinow in the New England Journal of Medicine)...said. Additionally, he noted that the drugs used in the study -- Celexa, Wellbutrin, Zoloft and Effexor -- work in very different ways yet had roughly equal effectiveness when it came to treating depression.
At the same time, the researchers acknowledged, the care provided in the study was exceptional. Intensive monitoring and careful evaluation was provided to all patients. Such services are available today in perhaps one in 10 medical practices. If the patients in this study had received the kind of care that patients receive on average, the researchers said, the remission rate probably would have been significantly lower -- perhaps even in the single digits.
"People who entered into this trial received a level of care which is quite different than many patients receive when they see a primary-care doc or even a psychiatrist,"
press release | Wash Post via MSNBC
~Now people with depression and those using these medications who are still having problems will know to ask their physicians for the same "intensive monitoring and careful evaluation" as the patients in this study! It's win-win. :)
Then again how many physicians are able to provide such services; how many medical insurers are willing to pay for them; and most importantly how many people with depression have the presence of mind to ask their primary physicians for "a level of care that is quite different"? ...To exact that level of care? Not bloody likely. :(
189 million prescriptions...times 30-pills per-prescription...times (roughly) $3.00-a-pill...divided by 50%...equals?
(Shouldn't that dollar total be added to the cost above?)
March 22, 2006
Sex & Sentiment
see (14.03.06) entry for links
from: http://ikastikos.blogspot.com/
~Sex and violins... sex and violence?
EUs Unsafe Airline Blacklist
The EU has banned 92 airlines from landing at European airports.
It says the airlines...fail to meet international safety standards.
It includes both cargo and passenger carriers from Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, Swaziland and Liberia.
EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said some planes used for flights to Europe were "flying coffins".
See the full list at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/transport/air/safety/flywell_en.htm
~In Alaska with it's thousands of bush pilots natural selection makes a blacklist unnecessary.
Coyote Captured in Central Park
~If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
Update; March 31:
Coyote That Romped in Central Park Dies | NYTimes
~Note the above article doesn't mention by what means the coyote was taken from Long Island to upstate Putnam County; how long the trip took; if he was sedated the whole time or that he needed to be tranquilized "(a)s workers were trying to tag him for release".
Obviously it was the stress from the week before that killed him, it couldn't have been anything that was done to him just before he died. These workers are professionals, who went to a lot of trouble for an animal whose pelt in some counties out west can still earn you a cash bounty. Be happy they got him that far.
April 4: Compare & Contrast: Who or What Killed Hal?
Five days after the wily one known as Hal dropped dead, there's no shortage of theories about what killed him.
Was it poison? A hidden disease? Or human error?
Hal led cops on a wild chase through Central Park last month, only to be captured and die suddenly while state wildlife officials were tagging him.
Some wildlife rehabilitators fear a Department of Environmental Conservation biologist and a Cornell graduate student who tried to tag Hal were unnecessarily rough with the stressed-out animal.
Meanwhile, a veteran wildlife pathologist performing the necropsy on Hal's body said a heartworm infestation may have contributed to his demise - and he's also trying to determine whether the carnivore wolfed down rodenticide.
"One thing I want to look at is did it eat something containing some poison along the way," said Ward Stone, a top researcher with the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
"There was a lot of internal bleeding, and so we want to find out the explanation for that."
But Elise Able, who runs Fox Wood Wildlife in upstate East Concord, thinks "careless and inhumane" handling by the DEC is to blame.
DEC officials said they placed a muzzle on the coyote's face, tied his legs and held him with a catch pole to carry out the prerelease tagging.
Stone can't say yet whether Hal suffered serious trauma following his capture - so stay tuned.
"I don't want to reach any conclusions on that until I have all my pieces together," he said.
story | The New York Daily News
~New York's DEC will find that the coyote died in custody of natural causes.
Operation Swarm of Lies
The stated mission of Operation Swarmer, launched late last week in an area just northeast of Samarra, in Iraq, was to "break up a center of insurgent resistance" and to disrupt "terrorist activity," according to the US military.
Comprised of over 1,500 US and Iraqi soldiers, 50 US attack and transport helicopters airlifted the bold force into a flat area of farmland filled not with fighters belonging to the "center of insurgent resistance," but with impoverished farmers, cows, goats and women baking bread. The first drop of soldiers onto the ground from this air-operation doubled the meager population of 1,500 souls living in the 50 square-mile area.
What did the military say about why no resistance was met?
"We believe we achieved tactical surprise," said Lt. Col. Edward Loomis, the spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division.
story by Dahr Jamail | TruthOut
~Support the troops! (Especially when engaged in operations with limited opportunities to do harm to themselves or the Iraqis!)
U.S. helicopters fly from a military base during Operation Swarmer near the town of Samarra, March 16, 2006. (Sgt. First Class Antony Joseph, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade/Handout/Reuters)
An Iraqi soldier guards suspected insurgents at his barracks in Baquba. Iraqi Defense Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi said six men suspected of involvement in the murder of Al-Arabiya journalists have been arrested as part of 'Operation Swarmer' -- a major Iraqi and US military sweep outside Samarra.(AFP/Ali Yussef)
AFP
[photos with captions from Yahoo News-photo search: "operation swarmer" not TruthOut]
~We can be almost certain the prisoners in the above photo are NOT the men suspected of involvement in the murder of Al-Arabiya journalists. More to the point what difference does it make? This photo's an accurate enough representation of military might supporting the rule of law for American news-consumers.
Overheard at Starbucks
"While running errands the other day the prescription my wife was carrying in her purse set off theft-alarms in Home Depot, WalMart and the local library."
---"You wife's not a klepto is she?"
"She did stop and wonder."
---"The library?!"
"She gets her prescriptions from CVS."
---"That's not an explanantion."
ETA Calls Permanent Cease Fire
The Winds of Hope*
The group has been fighting for independence for the Basque region of northern Spain and south-west France for nearly four decades.
It is blamed for killing more than 800 people in that time, many of them Spanish police, judges and politicians.
press release | BBC
Original document sent to EITB (a Basque radio and television group):
http://www.gara.net/dokumentuak/fitxategiak/eta_mezua_20060322_eus.rtf
Best regards.
~*Priapo
March 21, 2006
Fun With Photoshop Filters
3x~By the way here's a link on Spitting Image to 'flaqesque' one of the first things I did with Photoshop filters. More than twenty-months ago! What a long unremarkable trip it's been.
Workshop: Progressive Narratives of Sexual Pessimism
In this workshop...Possible topics include but are not limited to:
* contemporary ‘sexual politics:’ affinities and differences between contemporary progressive and conservative evaluations of sexuality;
* the characterisation, periodisation of ‘the sexual revolution(s)’ (e.g., Sigush’s concept of ‘neosexual revolution’);
* ‘sexual liberalization’ and ‘eroticization’ (Seidman);
* ‘costs and benefits’ of the sexual revolution(s);
* contemporary and future sex: a ‘the democratization of desire’ (McNair) or a vulgarisation of Eros?;
* sex and (post)modern identity/identities;
* ‘sexual backlash’ or ‘criticism of sexual licentiousness?’;
* the advantages and/or limits of the notion of ‘consent’ in sexual ethics;
* differences between American & European attitudes to contemporary sexuality;
* differences between ‘sex’ and ‘eroticism’ (cf. ‘Kinseyism’);
* the emergence of ‘progressive sexual pessimism;’
* etc…
http://issei2006.haifa.ac.il/ClaesTom.htm Chair: Tom Claes
(Tenth ISSEI Conference Malta 2006)
from Growing Up Sexually
[photo NOT from above sites]
California Gang Members to be Tracked by GPS
GPS tracking is just another tool in the bag; we will still use ground personnel to track gang members," said Sarah Ludeman, another spokeswoman for the corrections department.
Under an arrangement between prison officials and San Bernardino, high-risk parolees known to belong to street gangs will be released from custody on the condition that they wear a GPS bracelet on their ankles at all times.
They appear as moving dots on a map and if they try to remove the anklet or enter unauthorised areas the device sends an alert to a base station monitored by law enforcement officials.
The University of California at Irvine will review the results of the pilot program for its effectiveness.
press release via Aberrant News
Europe Moves Ahead With Weather Satellite Blacklist
>from July 2005
Data-access policy to meteorological satellite data has long been a source of disagreement between the United States and Europe, with Europe opting to commercialize some weather images and the U.S. taking more of a free-access view. In this case, the roles are reversed, but because of security concerns, not business-model issues.
For the Metop satellites, Eumetsat will be technically able to switch off access to data for individual users, in keeping with its existing policy of differentiating between fee-paying and free-access user groups.
In a similar case, U.S. and European authorities spent months haggling over access to satellite navigation and timing data from Europe's Galileo satellite system, now in development. Galileo will resemble the U.S. GPS system, but will be civilian-financed and run as a business.
U.S. and European officials have agreed on a policy that would permit Galileo program managers to deny access to a localized area during a conflict, similar to the U.S. GPS navigation-warfare strategy.
story from Aberrant News
2xOverheard at Starbucks
"Do you think there's people in the drug gangs around here working on their sobriety?"
---"Drug gangs? What drug gangs? Where?"
"Mules and bag-men proud of the days, weeks and months they've stopped using. As certain of their dependence on a higher power, as they are of their place in the organization."
---"Drug gangs with members who aren't users?"
"For sure, but also offering drug rehab for their people who want it; as part of the gang's medical plan."
---"Drug gangs with medical plans?...as if! Don't you know how chaotic a drug dealer's life is? Don't you watch tv?"
March 20, 2006
UK: Police Accused of Nude Photo Sales
Close-ups of naked people from artist’s mass shoot were allegedly sold
Around 1,700 volunteers stripped off last July in Newcastle, northeastern England, for an installation by New York-based contemporary artist Spencer Tunick, known worldwide for his photographs of massed groups of naked people. Northumbria police said they were investigating reports that pictures taken on the day from closed circuit television cameras were now being offered for sale in the area.
“We’ve spoken to a number of officers and police staff and as a result two (civilian) members of police staff have been suspended,” the force’s Deputy Chief Constable David Warcup said in a statement.
If there is found to be any substance in these allegations we will take prompt and robust action. This is not the standard of behavior expected from anyone employed by Northumbria Police.”
~Wankers.
Flesh photo: a chain of naked bodies snakes over the Millennium Bridge. Photograph: Mark Pinder/Baltic/PA*
>related: *The Guardians' story from last July
google image search results "spencer tunick" (No closeups.)
~Do UK or USA tabloid newspapers use pictures from CCTVs in their 'exposes' of our favorite celebrities, naked or otherwise? What trendy club, hotel or restaurant doesn't have surveillance cameras?
Change of Heartland
This month, the Indianapolis Star released poll findings that Bush's approval rating among Indiana voters stood at 37 percent -- a drop of 18 points over the past year. The numbers echoed national polls, but were particularly shocking in a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, and where Democratic presidential contenders often do not bother to campaign.
'A 37 percent approval rating in Indiana for a Republican president is unheard of," said Brian Howey, who runs a newsletter for Indiana state political insiders. ''Those are Bill Clinton or John Kerry numbers in Indiana. So there is something seriously awry going on right now."
~From Joerg who writes:
"People don't like comparisons between Bush and Hitler (for good reasons), but some similarities are just too weird. When you read this article you'll see how many voters really think that Bush somehow is kept in the dark and that's why Iraq is such a frickin mess, or somehow the military (or somebody else) doesn't do what what Bush wants etc. Now that is *exactly* what large parts of the German population thought at the end of WWII. They even thought that Hitler didn't know anything about the camps and that he certainly would not have approved of them. I think this clearly shows that while the people and the situations are different, there are some underlying things that just happen when you sell a "strong leader" with a lot of "charisma" (who actually is incompetent) to a bunch of people and then keep them in the dark about most details."
somewhat related:
"As the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq passed into history, the White House continued to dumb down what defines "victory," Bush administration officials regurgitated their upbeat talking points, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote an op-ed claiming, "The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. Now is the time for resolve, not retreat."
We may or may not agree with the president and his people, but at least they have an opinion.
Sadly, the same can't be said of the editorial writers for America's most influential mainstream media."
more: Editorial Writers: The Silence of the Sheep By William Fisher | t r u t h o u t
Top Free Equal Rights Assoc. (TERA)
Our basic claim is that women deserve equal rights. We do not suggest that women or men should go about with bare breasts. That is every individual's decision. We do believe that since men may choose to do so in many situations, women must also be able to at least in the same situations. Without penalty of any kind. Purpose
~I've a new found respect for organizations without a religious bias or affiliation.
Book: American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips
>from the Preface:
Book buyers will understand that in these United States volumes able to sell two or three hundred thousand hardcover copies are uncommon. Not rare, just uncommon. Consider, then, the publishing success of end-times preacher Tim LaHaye, earlier the politically shrewd founder (in 1981) of the Washington-based Council for National Policy. Beginning in 1994 LaHaye successfully coauthored a series of books on the rapture, the tribulation, and the road to Armageddon that has since sold some sixty million copies in print, video, and cassette forms. Evangelist Jerry Falwell hailed it as probably the most influential religious publishing event since the Bible.3 Several novels of the Left Behind series rose to number one on the New York Times fiction bestseller list, and the series as a whole almost certainly reached fifteen to twenty million American voters. Political aides in the Bush White House must have read several volumes, if only for pointers on constituency sentiment.
In that respect, the books were highly informative. LaHaye’s novels furnished hints rarely discussed by serious publications as to why George W. Bush’s 2002–2003 call for war in Iraq included jeering at the United Nations, harped on the evil regime in Baghdad, and pretended that democracy, not oil, was the motive. LaHaye had authored essentially that plot almost a decade earlier. His evil antichrist, who had a French financial adviser and rose to power through the United Nations, was headquartered in New Babylon, Iraq, not far from the Baghdad of Bush’s arch-devil, Saddam Hussein. The fictional Tribulation Force, which fought in God’s name, represented goodness and had nothing to do with oil, which was one of the antichrist’s evil chessboards.
Twenty years ago, The New York Times would not have considered LaHaye for the bestseller list, and my scenario of his writings influencing the White House could only have been spoof. Not so today. In a late-2004 speech, the retiring television journalist Bill Moyers, himself an ordained Baptist minister, broke with polite convention. He told an audience at the Harvard medical school that “one of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.”4
I would put it somewhat differently. These developments have warped the Republican party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices, and become a gathering threat to America’s future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive, even a partial captive, of the sort of biblical inerrancy—backwater, not mainstream—that dismisses modern knowledge and science...
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0603/S00296.htm
(scroll down for complete Preface)
thanks Conscientious
~"You can fool too many of the people, too much of the time." --James Thurber
[photo google\ not with the above]
I could pity the fools if they weren't so cruel. (One might think that cruelty sustains them. It's a hard life even for the chosen of God?)
March 19, 2006
Art: Kara Walker
Slavery!Slavery! presenting a GRAND and LIFELIKE Panoramic Journey into Picturesque Southern Slavery or "Life at 'Ol" Virginny's Hole' (sketches from Plantation Life)" See the Peculiar Institution as never before! All cut from black paper by Kara Elizabeth Walker, an Emancipated Negress and leader in her Cause 1997
from Sikkema-Jenkins & Co. (Works)
more Kara Walker info at ArtFactsNet
Newscasts Adopt Product Placement
There are more local news stations that are incorporating brands into news in innovative, cutting-edge ways," said Aaron Gordon, president of entertainment marketing firm Set Resources Inc. "The line, which has always been black and white in terms of what's news and what's commercials, is now being blurred."
We're all trying to find ways of integrating commercial messages into content that satisfy the audience and advertisers without hurting our product," KRON (San Francisco) president and general manager Mark Antonitis said. "When you're an independent, you've got to do what you can to survive. You bank on your credibility as a news organization every day, but you also have to be successful as a business. You have to be creative for your advertisers without compromising the credibility of your news organization."
"We bring on people all the time to talk about books, products and interesting new ideas anyway," Antonitis said of KRON's decision to integrate advertisers into its news programing. "So if we can have the added benefit of a new revenue source and give something to our viewers that they wouldn't be able to get otherwise and advertisers get their products advertised, it's a win-win-win."
via Harry Shearer's "LeShow" on NPR
~One of the H's at Unknown News asks: "Will Lockheed Martin underwrite 'news coverage' of defense issues? Will Disney pay half-a-million dollars to underwrite 'news coverage' of entertainment issues?"
To which one might reply, 'Why not? Once upon a time the 'air-waves' might've been 'public' but today broadcasting is a multi-billion dollar industry and news companies like all corporations owe their owners and/or stock-holders the greatest return possible on their investments. You can't censor progress; money will out.'
I think newscasters should wear hats at all times with company logos like the employees of McDonalds & Burger King. Or at very least suit jackets with patches like Nascar drivers. When watching tv whole minutes can pass in which I don't see any brand name products or advertisements.
~Playing fast & loose with google's images on this blog has taught me to look in a different way. For example, I can appreciate this photo less for it's celebrity than for how it may or may not complement the next image. His celebrity is undoubtedly the most anyone might take from viewing it, while any relationship with nearby images is accidental and imaginary, but it's fun holding those images together for awhile anyway. It's similar to putting two words together than haven't yet been previously written, spoken or heard. Baby smoke.
Torture: Before & After Abu Ghraib
As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.
The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.
story NYTimes via Truthout
~What would Iraq would be like today if this highly trained counterterrorism unit wasn't using torture? We'll never know what these men and women had to do to fight terrorism and preserve American democracy.
Event: The Child & the Book
7 - 9 April 2006, Newcastle University
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/niassh/childandthebook/programme.htm#2B
>for example from the above programme this abstract:
KRISTEN SIPPER, University of Nottingham, England
The Development of the Child Hero in Children’s Fiction
Since the advent of children’s literature, child-characters have been given a terribly important role in children’s narratives, often ‘saving’ those in danger around them. Interestingly, over the past several hundred years, the role of the child hero has grown in importance, and the tasks they undertake have increased repercussions. In early didactic narratives of the Georgian period, child protagonists in the works of such authors as Maria Edgeworth, Mrs Sherwood, and Sarah Trimmer are responsible for saving the souls of their fellow children through the example they set to their peers. In later didactic Evangelical Tract novels of the mid to late Victorian period, through their guileless innocence, the child protagonists show the sinful adults around them the ways of Christ, thus redeeming these adults. In some cases, the child heroes even show the corruption of church leaders and put them back on a holy path. Modern children’s literature shows an extreme progression of the importance of the child protagonist. Works such as Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books show children now being responsible for saving the entire world and keeping order in the universe. This paper will explore the development of the child hero, examining why this shift has taken place and its significance.
Science.gov Now Offering Alerts 3.0
Science.gov a search engine for science information provided by US government agencies, is now offering Alerts 3.0, a new version of their e-mail alerts. (You can run a search of Science.gov's search engine of over 45 million pages of science information, and save the search as an "alert". You will be e-mailed when new documents in the search index match your query.) You'll need to be registered to receive the alerts (registration is free and very simple)...
press release | Research Buzz
ArchiveGrid
RedLightGreen has started an excellent site called ArchiveGrid, to aggregate information about collections in archives, museums, etc. It's free through May 31.
ArchiveGrid's list of contributors
more info:
http://www.researchbuzz.org/2006/03/most_excellent_its_an_archive.shtml
Am. Library Assoc's 2005 Most Challenged Books
[illus google\ not ALA]
~I've heard people describe me as mentally challenged, but I don't think it means the same thing.
Are there people who are sexually stimulated by anxiety concerning the sexual knowledge and activity of children?
Also is censorship a turn-on for anyone?
Prosecutor: Soldiers Don't Torment Prisoners Because It's Fun*
Abu Ghraib's former military intelligence chief told the court at Fort George G. Meade that the dogs were to be used "to assist in setting conditions for interrogations."
Col. Thomas M. Pappas testified Wednesday that he approved a one-time use of muzzled dogs inside interrogation booths but he later learned he lacked the authority to give such an order.
In May, Pappas was reprimanded, fined $8,000 and relieved of his command of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade for failing to get approval from his supervisor, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
The Army officer who directly oversaw security at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and early 2004 testified Thursday that there was nothing inhumane about having a dog bark at detainees and that unmuzzled dogs helped maintain order at the prison.
(Sgt. Michael Smith, formerly of West Palm Beach), 24, is charged with 13 offenses stemming from the alleged abuse and faces up to 24 1/2 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
~One less bad apple? No way of knowing from the above how often dogs were used in US military prisons "to assist in setting conditions for interrogations", or if they're still being used.
This story fails to mention that Sgt. Smith and another soldier (others too?) were wagering on how quickly their dogs could make prisoners soil themselves. Or how often they played that game. I wonder if making a prisoner piss himself was worth less than making him crap himself?
Would Sgt. Smith been arrested if there were no Abu Ghraib photos? Talk about bad luck; Smith's a sadistic 'Sad Sack'?
Is his Black Belgian shepherd facing court-marshal too?
The dog's probably more valuable because of this trial; he'll probably find a nice home working in a US prison or for a city's police force?
[photo google\ not with story (Sgt Smith's black Belgian Shepherd?)]
*Soldiers torment prisoners because it's their job?
March 18, 2006
Peace Activists Will 'Turn Themselves In'
Ann Arbor-based Michigan Peaceworks will be taking mug shots of willing attendees at this Sunday's protest rally and march through downtown Ann Arbor. The protest commemorates the third anniversary of the war in Iraq.
The pictures, along with placards labeled "war protester," will be delivered to U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials at the Ann Arbor Federal Building at a later date as part of the group's "turn yourself into the National Security Agency" initiative.
~This reminds me a little of my three-month long solo street performance "Under Surveillance" (working title). I would've made photos of myself, if I had a clue who to send them to, or if it would've changed a thing. This was years before the NSA came out of the closet with their surveillance of American citizens. Furthermore I was certain that my 'audience' was local not national. My performance got good word-of-mouth, in fact I wouldn't be here today if I'd closed early, took my show on the road and hadn't stuck it out like I did.
[photo google\ not from above]
Abu Ghraib Files
279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army's internal investigation record a harrowing three months of detainee abuse inside the notorious prison -- and make clear that many of those responsible have yet to be held accountable.
http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/
| Salon
from Conscientious
Bush's War
~From Conscientious: "I just can't stop looking at those people who you can see in the windows there. This photo so totally sums this war up."
Portable Art
Art That Goes Anywhere
"The aptly-named Portable Gallery is, indeed, highly portable. This globally-accessible virtual exhibition space for art, film, and music delivers downloadable files right to your computer at the click of a mouse. Self-described as 'a leading digital arts arena within the young Nordic creative community,' the gallery recently launched Exhibition #003, which includes Danish brothers Rune RK and Johannes Torpe (a.k.a. Artificial Funk) in 'Music Without Instruments,' a work that combines a bicycle, a printer, and a coffee machine in tuneful yet non-traditional ways. There's also Sweden's celebrated art/ fashion photographer Martina Hoogland Ivanow's 'Spectators' series, which turns the camera on the audience in a visual examination of the psychology behind watching. Fans of Norway's notorious artist/ DJ, Cato Canarican, can also enjoy a sampler from his long-awaited second album by visiting the space. Portable Gallery gives 'state of the art' a whole new meaning, by shifting its physical status and bringing it straight to you." - Peggy MacKinnon | Rhizome
http://www.portable-gallery.com/
~Sure it's a gimmick, but what's wrong with that?
Photo-caption Non Sequitur
"When you consider the opportunity and power he had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess he made of it instead, his sheer incompetence is almost staggering."
[photo: google\ caption: J. Heller "Catch 22"]
Sexual Assault & the Naval Academy
Despite evidence, most accused Midshipmen simply expelled
At colleges across the country, administrators acknowledge that too few campus rapes lead to prosecution. But unlike most colleges, the Naval Academy has the power to bring criminal charges directly against its students through the military justice system.
story | MSNBC (Wash. Post)
>related links to DOD Sexual Assault Report 2005 | Docuticker
@
~Some maggots are luckier than others?
March 17, 2006
Nuclear Reactors Found to be Leaking Radioactive Water
The Union of Concerned Scientists, which is critical of nuclear power safety arrangements, said recently that in the past 10 years, tritium had leaked from at least seven reactors. It called for a systematic program to ensure there were no more leaks.
Tami Branum, who lives close to the Braidwood (IL) reactor and owns property in the nearby village of Godley, said in a telephone interview, "It's just absolutely horrible, what we're trying to deal with here." Ms. Branum and her children, 17-year-old twin girls and a 7-year-old boy, drink only bottled water, she said, but use municipal water for everything else. "We're bathing in it, there's no way around it," she said.
A spokesman for Exelon, Craig Nesbit, said that neither Godley's water nor Braidwood's water system was threatened, but that the company had lost credibility when it did not publicly disclose a huge fuel oil spill and spills of tritium from 1996 to 2003. No well outside company property shows levels that exceed drinking water standards, he said.
Mr. Diaz (chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission)... speaking to a gathering of about 1,800 industry executives and government regulators last week, said utilities were planning to apply for 11 reactor projects, with a total of 17 reactors. The Palo Verde reactor was the last one that was ordered, in October 1973, and actually built.
[This month, workers at the Palo Verde plant in New Mexico found tritium in an underground pipe vault.]
As the agency prepares to review license applications for the first time in decades, it is focusing on "materials degradation," a catch-all term for cracks, rust and other ills to which nuclear plants are susceptible...
Tritium, a form of hydrogen with two additional neutrons in its nucleus, is especially vexing. The atom is unstable and returns to stability by emitting a radioactive particle. Because the hydrogen is incorporated into a water molecule, it is almost impossible to filter out. The biological effect of the radiation is limited because, just like ordinary water, water that incorporates tritium does not stay in the body long.
But it is detectable in tiny quantities.... The Energy Department closed a research reactor in New York at its Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, largely because of a tritium leak.
~We need that nuclear energy. It doesn't matter how many town wells are contaminated. Exelon's executives and their families certainly don't live in towns like Braceville and Godley.
Terrorism a Threat to Wyoming Agriculture Federal Official Says
March 17, 06
Is agriculture a target? Is agriculture in Wyoming a target? Yes," said Rick Riesland, area emergency coordinator for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The federal government has found documents from the al-Qaida terrorist network indicating it has planned biological attacks on the United States, Riesland said during a slide presentation.
Disease agents, such as the virus that causes foot and mouth disease, are readily available worldwide and could easily be spread among food animals in the United States, said Riesland, a veterinarian. And he warned that agriculture is a soft target.
Kelly Ruiz, spokeswoman for the state Office of Homeland Security, said one of the most important things people in Wyoming can do is keep their eyes open.
"If you see a truck you don't know dropping into a feed lot at the wrong time of night, or dropping hay and feed into a ranch where it doesn't belong, call local law enforcement right away," Ruiz said. "Wyoming residents are the first line of defense."
~Isn't this good news? Given that disease agents are readily available worldwide and could easily be spread? That in the four-plus years since 9/11 and many Bin Laden taped threats, no Al-Qaida terrorist network planned biological attacks on the United States have occurred?
Is the water-trough half-empty or half-full?
>maybe related:
@ | CBS News (3/14/06)
Wyoming ranchers could be the first line of defense against mad cow disease as well? I wonder during the above presentation on terrorism, if there were questions about BSE? (Everyone knew, there's was no need to spell it out?)
Then again, it's an election year. It may be important to keep the threat of terrorism fresh in the Republicans' core-constituents minds?
The threat of terrorism has been very very good for the Republican Party?
March 16, 2006
Call for Papers: "The Dark"
Octopus (Volume 2) Fall 2006
www.octopusjournal.org
Deadline for Submissions: April 3, 2006.
We are pleased to announce the topic of our second issue — “The Dark.”
Concepts of “light” and “dark” have currency as a metaphorical referent—to illuminate, cast a shadow on, to set in contrast to, as markers of knowledge or obfuscation. Exemplified by one of the dominant philosophical regimes in the Western tradition—emerging from the “Dark Ages” and into the “Enlightenment”— this metaphor assumes a position as a structuring matrix, a system of oppositions or relativities used to work through historical moments and objects of study. Because cultural conventions often set light (active/positive/presence) and dark (passive/negative/absence) against each other, the incorporation of these ubiquitous concepts manifests itself in a broad range of cultural concerns including aesthetics, politics, ethics, gender, race and ethnicity, technology, religion, and the media, and has itself a legacy of warranted critical attention.
The idea of “the dark” occupies a particularly critical position within
the emerging field of Visual Studies. For this issue we present the question of “the dark” as an analytical tool, a historical concept, and
as a limit or end of visual studies itself. The second issue of Octopus
invites manuscripts that engage with “the dark” from a wide-range of perspectives. Possible lines of inquiry include but are not limited to:
1) Photography’s light and dark: polychromy, monochromy, being
photogenic, the space of the darkroom
2) Cinema’s light and dark: flicker, the space of spectatorship,
Noir, horror
3) Darkness and light as absence and presence; invisibility,
avisuality, disappearance, negation, blind spots
4) Gender, race, and ethnicity
5) “Intelligence” and its connection to metaphors of “illumination”
6) The politics of “dimness”
7) Philosophy, theosophy, hermeneutics
8) Literature, linguistics
9) Architecture, shadow
10) Material lightness and darkness; technologies of light
11) Military stealth/night vision
12) Self-awareness, epiphanies, criticism
13) Minimalism, Post-Minimalism.
14) Plato’s cave/ shadowplay/ camera obscura/ chiaroscuro
15) Rhetorics of good and evil
16) Aesthetics and spirituality
Deadline for Submissions: April 3, 2006.
Submission Guidelines: www.octopusjournal.org
Octopus Journal is a publication of the graduate students in the Program of Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine.
~Earlier today I was reminded of the mad/bad and foolish-wrong/bad-wrong bifurcations. Mad/bad referring to kids with problems and foolish-wrong/bad-wrong referring to a financial scandal. Just when you think you're beyond dualism, it rears up its ugly heads.
Where Next?
A web page that makes it possible to bet on the place of the next
terrorist attack, locatable through a service of Google Earth. The winner is awarded with a T-shirt with a photo of the attack and the caption “I PREDICTED IT!”.
http://www.where-next.com/ via Rhizome Digest