June 30, 2006
Student Is Charged In Camera Incident
WEST HARTFORD -- It was a busy day (June 17) at Conard High School Thursday, what with the release of scores of crickets in the cafeteria as a senior prank and the arrest of student council president Francisco Acevedo Jr., after he video-recorded what he said was excessive use of force by a police officer in the midst of the chaos.
[Acevedo said he focused on Parizo when he saw the officer, who was trying to make his way through the crowd, "shoving the kid around." The 17-year-old was trying to push Parizo's hands away, Acevedo said.
Acevedo said it appeared Parizo was starting to pull his baton out of its holster. At that point, Acevedo said, he told Parizo: "I've got you on tape. I'm videotaping this and you're using force on this kid. Chill out." At that point, Acevedo said, Zytka yelled at him to put away the camera.]
School officials told Acevedo he was being suspended for disrespect and insubordination because he challenged Vice Principal Irene Zytka's order that he put his camera away. Acevedo said he put the camera away, then told Zytka, "I have every right to record the police using force and it seemed like he was going to beat him up," according to the affidavit filed in federal court.
Acevedo was charged with breach of peace and interfering with a police officer. He and the other student were handcuffed at the school, taken to the police station in the back of a cruiser, fingerprinted and booked. Acevedo said he was in a cell for about two hours before being released.
"Police do not have to take someone into custody for a misdemeanor," (attorney, Jon) Schoenhorn said. "In my opinion it was done in retribution for the videotaping."
~Police officers don't like being photographed in the performance of their duly-sworn duties of keeping the peace. But how about that Vice Principal Irene Zytka? What's it in for her allowing the cop to brain one of her students? Cops are cops and to be pitied more than scorned, but WTF teacher!?
>update: 6/22/06
Suspended Student (Council President) Allowed to Walk at Graduation
During testimony, (Vice-principal Irene) Zytka repeatedly contended that Acevedo continued to loudly argue with her and that she had never been spoken to in that fashion by a student before.
...school officials agreed to shorten Acevedo's suspension from five to three days, allowing him to walk with his class Wednesday night.
In exchange, Acevedo was required to do 10 hours of community service and to make a one-sentence statement: "I acknowledge that at some point during my encounter with Dr. Zytka that my actions were inappropriate."
~The kid with the camera got excited, over-reacted. He'll learn never to threaten police with a camera when they're hard at work restoring order and he should have known not to use that tone of voice on a person with Vice-Principal's Zytka's education and obvious breeding. Case-closed.
News of the Weird
Troy and Jennifer Schally disclosed in June that their son Henry
had chosen, among several possibilities as the theme for his third
birthday party, PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," and the
Schallys supplied a birthday cake with a photo of the show's
correspondents and a periodic playing of its theme music.
According to a Washington Post report, Lehrer sent along an
autographed photo, signed in the name Henry calls him, "Jimmy
Jimmy BoBo." [Washington Post, 6-15-06]
Richard Costello, 29, was arrested in Clearwater, Fla., in May and
charged with stealing motorcycle parts after police recovered
photos of the parts, which they suspect were snapped by Costello.
At the bottom of each photo, the photographer's bare toes are
visible and display the tattoos "white" and "trash," matching
Costello's own tattooed toes. [St. Petersburg Times, 5-4-06]
...in June, the Motion Picture Association of America, for the first time ever, announced that it was rating a film PG (Parental Guidance) not for any sex, violence, or bad language, but just because it is too openly religious (the film "Facing the Giants," starring Georgia preacher Alex Kendrick).(Salisbury, Md.)-AP, 6-22-06]
On many weekends a year in parks in the Washington-Baltimore
area, 100 or more people gather in medieval costumes and wield
soft weapons to wage battle in the 20-year-old Darkon Wargaming
Club, according to a May report in Baltimore City Paper. Players
point out that their hobby is simply of a piece with historical-battle
video games and feature films, but still acknowledge the whimsy.
Said a club manager (who is the wife of the player "Shalor" of the
"Bloody Axe Mercenary Company"), on seeing the games for the
first time, "I didn't want to get out of the car. I thought it was the
dorkiest thing I'd ever seen. And 12 years later, of course, I'm
running the thing." (An acclaimed documentary film on the club,
"Darkon," has just been released.) [Baltimore City Paper, 5-10-06]
Many British churches have recently installed the new Hymnal Plus, a karaoke machine to help congregations recite verses and sing hymns (including risky tunes, such as a disco version of "Amazing Grace"). [The Guardian (London), 4-27-06]
A violent video game based on the evangelical "Left Behind" novels, "Left Behind: Eternal Forces," was introduced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles in May, and features the Tribulation Force bloodily battling the army of the Antichrist. Reviews have been severely mixed (either a positive step to spiritualize the video games culture, or grotesque violence seemingly sanctioned under the cover of the Bible). [Los Angeles Times, 5-10-06]
True Crime: Relocating Sex Offenders Can Backfire
Dozens of sex offenders flocked to faded motels and run-down trailer parks. Others are now homeless, sleeping in their vehicles parked in deserted rest areas and empty lots on the outskirts of Iowa's larger cities.
Twenty-six sex offenders now live in the Ced-Rel Motel, which sits amid cornfields on the outskirts of Cedar Rapids.
"When you come to this motel from out of town, you may not realize that 97 percent of it is made up of sex offenders," Zeller said. "You may be oblivious to that and if you have children, you may let them go get a pop alone. Rather than making a safe environment, we have made a more hostile environment for people to live in."
story | Lexington Herald-Leader
from Unknown News
~I wonder what the nanny-states in Europe do with their ex-sex-offenders? At least America's taxpayers aren't paying to house and feed these monsters. Keep-'em moving, right? (For a vacation your family will never forget.)
Art: Streets as Stages
>Technologically-mediated encounters in city spaces
With networked technologies now a staple of urban life, it's hardly a surprise that new media artists so frequently engage the aesthetic possibilities of areas like street corners or shopping malls. The new exhibition, Urban Networks, organized by Susan Joyce at Boston's Art Interactive, presents works by John (Craig) Simon, Jody Zellen, UrbanTells, Urban Atmospheres, and Finishing School, all of whom explore technologically-mediated encounters and situations in city spaces. Some are interested in social behavior such as 'Meet/Greet,' by Finishing School, which examines the interactions between a customized polylingual drone and the pedestrians it addresses. Others are research-based, such as 'Imaging Place,' initiated by Simon in 1997, which considers possibilities for location-based virtual reality experiences. On Thursday, June 29th, Art Interactive will team up with new media art organization Turbulence and the Boston branch of the international artist-run Upgrade! ! to present two artists' talks in conjunction with the exhibition. Join Vancouver-based Nancy Nisbet and MIT graduate student Amber Frid-Jimenez as they discuss their practices--and stretch your notion of creative terrain from your studio out onto the street. - Lauren Cornell | Rhizome
http://www.artinteractive.org/shows/urban_networks/
High Tech Border Security
Through Innovations in Sensor, Surveillance and Detection Technology
While the President pushes for increased manpower along the borders, additional and effective technology helps to supplement this need. Working to contribute to the overall technology border technology portfolio are several firms developing a variety of innovative security products to help protect the nation's borders.
Praetorian... an integrated view of vast miles of borders, permitting the U.S. far improved situation awareness leading to better security through earlier detection, visual and other sensor confirmation of areas of concern... with fewer false alarms.
The Milliscope... designed to meet an increasing demand within the security arena for an accurate and portable explosive detection device that can be used alone or in conjunction with other screening solutions. This technology will also help to reduce the incidence of false alarms in concealed weapons detection and concealed explosives detection."
TraceGuard solutions are specifically designed with four main objectives: 1) to reduce the number of people waiting in line at airports; 2) to reduce the number of security screening personnel required to man the checkpoints; 3) to be sensitive enough to extract particles from fingerprints left by someone handling the explosives,* and 4) to be deployed in conjunction with existing screening technologies."
Sense is well positioned... with mature field-proven biometric identification technology. Also, together with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, we are developing patented MEMS-based equipment designed to quickly and inexpensively detect a wide-spectrum of explosives and chemical warfare agents.
press release w/ links to more info | Marketwire
>*Compare and contrast this Traceguard 'objective' with General Electric/Cubic's "fingertip trace detection analyzer" as described in the press release linked through here on Spitting Image.
Can they detect explosives from fingertip traces or not? Accurate enough for HAZMAT & SWAT teams?
~These are only a few of the systems they can tell us about. Knock-offs of the top-secret stuff? For investors who want to get on the Homeland Security bandwagon. Hey rube?
June 29, 2006
Random Art
from Pictures displayed at Cyberpipe Internet Cafe
more http://www.random-art.org/
~I don't know. I don't know how to be more random; how to add more random to my diet; how to add more randomness to my daily routines; how to open myself to the random; how to embrace randomness and make it an integral part of my existence.
Who Is Using Random.org?
As mentioned in my (Mads Haar) essay on randomness and random numbers, true random numbers can be used for many purposes, perhaps the most important of which is the generation of cryptographic keys. Numbers from random.org shouldn't be used for this purpose because they might be observed by a third party while in transit, but there are other applications (most notably games and lottery type services) that require true randomness but where secrecy isn't important. This web page lists companies and people who use numbers from random.org for such purposes and who have mailed me to say thanks and explain their use of the numbers.
~There's a special feeling of accomplishment linking to random.org.
Another stitch in the weave, another bead on the string, another knot in the rope, another step on the path.
I think I need to think I'm less predictable than I am.
Landscapes Memory
Painting brought out Beckett's most passionate enthusiasm and even influenced his writing
"The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep's placentas and the long summer days and the new-mown hay and the wood-pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of the gorse and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling The Roses Are Blooming in Picardy and the standard oil-lamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and every fourth year the February debacle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting over again."
article by John Banville
Detailed Babies
more http://members.lycos.nl/twinklin/newpage1.html
thanks Diederik
~I don't know why either. I'm guessing whoever put these babies here is happy not sad. These babies are (interpretations of) the twinkling stars (one wishes to be) found in one's home and heart but not yet in heaven?
Overheard at Starbucks
"Do it yourself mantras?"
---"Be your own guru...it's about self-empowerment, soldier."
"Esera?"
---"Empathy, sympathy, encouragement, respect, admiration."
Que sera, sera.
---"Aseer, then.... I'm easy."
The Threat to the Planet
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19131
thanks Conscientious
~Imagine what'll happen to the energy companies, the poor CEO's in charge, when Congress passes laws strictly regulating fossil-fuel emissions? Sing along with me : "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
Does anyone really think our leaders would do anything that might negatively impact (the quarterly, let alone long term profits of) these corporations?
Nuclear power is the only solution that will quickly lower fuel emissions and require oil companies to do nothing except cut-back production. That and hybrid vehicles.
It'll be interesting to see how the average American consumer comes to accept that the new nuclear power plants up-wind are not that dangerous after all.
Rising gas prices and lower wages will eventually change our ideas about owning muscle cars while NASCAR becomes an officially recognized tax-exempt religion.
The problems of nuclear plant construction costs, accidents and waste storage will all but disappear once the Republicans and their Evangelical followers acknowledge that in order for America to maintain (choose any two) it's agriculture, forests, wild horses, coast lines, ski-resorts, private islands, blessings of liberty and stock dividends for all, something must be done about fossil fuels and global warming.
I've seen the future and it glows.
[photo from @ via google\ not above]
Aryan Cars
http://www.aryancars.co.uk/28699/aryan.htm
~Joerg says, "No, seriously, this is NOT a good name for a Volkswagen car dealership."
June 28, 2006
Seduced by Flickering Lights of the Brain
fMRI images have captivated headline writers, grant committees and the public beyond their actual scientific worth.
...fMRI seems more like real science than many of the other things that psychologists are up to. It has all the trappings of work with great lab-cred: big, expensive, and potentially dangerous machines, hospitals and medical centers, and a lot of people in white coats. In a recent study, Deena Skolnick, a graduate student at Yale, asked her subjects to judge different explanations of a psychological phenomenon. Some of these explanations were crafted to be awful. And people were good at noticing that they were awful—unless Skolnick inserted a few sentences of neuroscience. These were entirely irrelevant, basically stating that the phenomenon occurred in a certain part of the brain. But they did the trick: For both the novices and the experts (cognitive neuroscientists in the Yale psychology department), the presence of a bit of apparently-hard science turned bad explanations into satisfactory ones.*
article by Paul Bloom
*This 'money quote' & link by way of Language Log
[illus from @\ not above links]
Sheriff's Office Selects zNose for Contraband Applications
Electronic Sensor Technology...a leading provider of innovative homeland security and environmental solutions, announced today that the Sheriff's office of Snohomish County in Washington has selected zNose(R)... for contraband applications.
EST's staff was at the Sheriff's Office training a group of officers the operation of zNose for detecting conventional and plastic explosives and also drugs of abuse. Samples of explosives and drugs of abuse were demonstrated and the officers were very pleased that zNose could complement the dogs in quantifying the detected substances.
~At least zNose won't bite you in the crotch.
>on Spitting Image search results for ZNose
Fun with Photoshop Filters
Artifaks Copy View image
(This image best viewed by adults after consuming within thirty minutes five shots of medium-quality tequila, with or without lemon-slices/salt or orange juice. Don't drink and drive.)
Art Exhibitions with Accompaning Audio
"WPS1 and P.S.1 have partnered with Time Out New York to bring you exclusive audio tracks to accompany exhibitions on view at P.S. 1"
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/ViewSection.do?sectionId=art&fileName=547audio
~At my art-exhibit I'm going to insist that patrons have a meal and/ or drinks, at any nearby restaurant or bar I can get as sponsor, for the complete Stubbornson-Art-Experience.
Police Can Use E-Z Pass Data to Track Drivers
Since the electronic toll system was installed last summer, there have been six law enforcement requests for E-Z Pass data showing the time and place each transponder passes through a tollbooth, said ((Massachusetts) Department of Transportation spokesman Bill Boynton.
Transportation Commissioner Carol Murray said the first request came from the FBI and involved a bank robbery.
The other four requests came from the Merrimack County attorney's office; the Middlesex County district attorney's office in Massachusetts; and Massachusetts State Police (two requests). Authorities did not release any more information about those cases.
New Hampshire, one of the last states on the east coast to join the E-ZPass system, has tighter restrictions on the release of information than some other states.
story | Boston Globe
~I'm waiting for states to begin issuing speeding tickets when the times between toll booths don't jive with posted speed limits. They can deduct the cost of the fines automatically from drivers' E-Z Pass accounts.
Overheard at Starbucks
"What ever happened to jolly fat people?"
---"How old are you? Seriously dude."
"Anorexics were never funny."
---"Fat might've been funny in ancient times... skinny is sexier."
"Are there any fat saints?"
---"There's Santa Claus...and your mother."
Something to Think About:
"Modern nudity carries many messages, all of them united by their lack of sophistication" (story) I don't think I'd make such a sweeping generalization as far as nude portraits are concerned (even though I definitely agree with the author about the Vanity Fair et al. photography) - over the past months, I've linked* to some very nice treatments of the nude human form.
from blog entry: Put Your Clothes On | Conscientious
>related *Conscientious' Search Results for "nude"
photo (large/url) by Carla Van de Puttelaar
by way of this blog entry
~When the 8.5 X 11in sized photo above (large/url) first opened on my pc screen (it took a few minutes) I felt I understood once and for all why men put figurines of women on the prows of their ships; why teenagers hung glossy pin-ups on their bedroom walls.
But then I noticed my nude woman was sleeping, not a appropriate pose for either guiding ships or wankers' walls and I felt creepy, (An inappropriate appropriation..the inappropriate gaze?) I don't understand nudity at all.
I can never be anyone's nude. Genetics, life-style and class conspire against it. (OK maybe in a darkened room with a certain someone, a bottle of tequila, etc.)
I will never be A nude. Certainly not nude in the way this young woman in the photo was for me this morning.
As for naked...I'm naked right now.
June 27, 2006
Students Design Sensor Network To Protect Romanian Forest
The application works under low power requirements, establishing a network and routing protocol that connects the sensors to a central server. From there, alerts are sent to PDAs if poaching or other illegal activity is detected.
The application uses a network of sensors to monitor humidity, sound, temperature and carbon monoxide levels.
The Politehnica University of Bucharest students built the application with Microsoft Corp. products, and they took first place in the recent Windows Embedded Student ChallengE. The group was one of 30 international teams who made the finals.
The application focuses on saving Romania's forests by tying into the contest theme: preserve, protect and enhance the environment. Illegal logging, which accounts for about 40 percent of the trees cut down in Romania, contributes to flash floods and landslides...
http://www.forestwatcher.net/
~In other places in the world where poachers may not be a problem couldn't sensor networks like this be used to control access to what once were public lands, public parks?
Hanford Site Tour
...the Hanford Site, a 586-square-mile reservation created in World War II as part of the Manhattan Project.
The desire to see what is inside the fences of the reservation drew 350 people here over three days to view the mix of past, present and future at the once-secret site.
...the DOE reactors and other facilities on the reservation were dedicated to creating one final product, plugs of plutonium which were later machined into the explosive hearts of nuclear weapons.
"We made about 27,000 of those," (Michele Gerber, one of the tour guides) said. "That was about 60 percent of the nuclear material made in the United States".
That's why Hanford's famous and that's why it will be famous for probably as long as we're alive," Gerber said.
The tour's final leg led through the "200 Areas," where the plutonium was chemically separated from uranium slugs and then made a stop at one of the largest landfills in the United States, where low-level radioactive waste is being buried in lined pits.
As with everything else at the Hanford Site, the quantities are huge. According to Tom Kisenwether, one of the site workers, more than six million tons of waste have been buried at the site, with more to come.
"We do about 3,000 tons a day," he said.
story | Walla Walla Union-Bulletin
[illus. google\ not from above]
Website: Buttocks in the History of Art
"I've spent a lot of time in those gigantic art museums in Europe. After 10 miles of walking and staring at thousands of art works, there is still ten thousand pieces to see and 20 miles of corridors to go. Usually at that stage my head gets so torpid that I just walk like a zombie and time to time I stop in front of some paintings or sculptures. I once, probably in Louvre, begun to think over what is the sign which makes me to stop. Then I realised it and I asked myself what am I really interested in art?
;-)
http://www.ojaniemi.com/bha/buhiar/indexx.html
Mammograms May Cause Breast Cancer
Lead researcher Dr David Goldgar (The Journal of Clinical Oncology study.. led by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France) said: "This is one of the first studies to demonstrate that women genetically predisposed to breast cancer may be more susceptible to low-dose ionizing radiation than other women.
Women who were exposed to X-rays before age 20 had a 2.5-fold increased risk of developing the disease before age 40, compared with women who had never been exposed..
...the researchers admitted that it was possible that women who had gone on to develop breast cancer might be more likely to remember having had an X-ray than those who remained free from the disease.
They also failed to collect data on the specific dose and timing of radiation that was received.
~As seen on local tv news, with few of the details mentioned above . Fyi: UKs chest-x-rays = USAs mammograms.
When a diagnostic test causes a disease is that a "side-effect"? How about when the testing procedure causes the very disease it's supposed to be diagnosing?
Before having any mammograms (i.e. chest X-rays) young women should first be tested for the BRCA1 and 2 gene mutations? There're so many mammogram machines around; what are the chances that "Breast-Cancer Awareness Charities" will soon be launching all-out ad-campaigns to re-educate mothers and daughters on how best to be tested?
How expensive, how accurate, are the tests for the BRCA1 and 2 gene mutations?
Would widely publized news about mammogram risks cause more breast cancer deaths than simply continuing mammograms for everyone?
Do you think medical insurance companies have already figured out the cost-risk analysis of present-day use of mammograms versus BRCA1 and 2 gene testing first for everyone followed by mammograms only for those who can tolerate them?
Did an MRI manufacturer sponser this study?
Library of Congress: Photos; Prints
Search Selected Collections
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/ListSome.php?format=Photograph
Note: individual photos chosen from search result lists often have links to other images by the same photographer or as in the photo below
a "display images with neighboring call numbers" link:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/b?ammem/fsaall:LC-USF34-035522-D:collection=fsa
June 26, 2006
Air Torture
Exclusive Air Torture Services
All Air Torture reservations are booked through government intelligence agencies.
Air Torture takes seatbelts to a whole new level, providing passengers with restrains such as shackling in uncomfortable positions for the duration of their flight, and amenities such as hooding. As an added bonus, we'll forcibly drug you so you can spend the entire trip in a disoriented state!
Air Torture respects your privacy. We won't tell your family or loved ones where you are, what's happened to you, or when you'll be back - ever! It will be just like you disappeared.
http://www.airtorture.com/
A Cautionary Tale Concerning Journalists & Moral Panic
"On the morning of Thursday, November 10th 2005 I suddenly found myself on the outskirts of a journey into the warfare of a moral panic...
The cause of all this was a paper that I had originally written and submitted to a journal back in 1999. As sometimes happens, following a rejection, I’d put it to one side and moved on to other things. Years later, a chance conversation informed me that a new publication had been launched, for which my erstwhile article might be suitably updated. I duly sent it in...
The paper drew on life history data to discuss the undoubtedly sensitive area of consensual romantic and sexual relationships between teachers and pupils in secondary schools. In writing the paper my intention was to highlight the importance of discourse, and through the stories of individuals who had such relationships, invite critical consideration of what is sometimes presented as a straightforward, uncontroversial issue. At no point did I seek to justify or excuse paedophilia, child abuse, underage sex, or exploitative relationships. Indeed I wrote:
I am aware that some readers may find the content of the paper and the nature of the discourse I will be using questionable and maybe even dangerous and irresponsible. On the basis of the particular stories I have been told, this is no reason not to proceed. If, as researchers, we have an interest in ‘naming silenced lives’ (see McLaughlin & Tierney, 1993), using the stories and words of those who live them, and thereby, possibly challenging orthodoxies and norms, we have to think very carefully about why we might wish to deny some people voice (eg paedophiles, see Plummer, 1995 p. 118). We also have to consider issues around the representation and potential negative ‘othering’ (see Fine, 1994) of the people whose tales we use and tell.
Anticipating criticism I wish to state my belief that stories of this kind do have something important to tell us about the way in which discourses of sexuality operate in schools. (Sikes, pending publication no page numbers)
Of course I knew that this was a tricky area and within the paper had quoted references to ‘moral panic’ concerning children and sex. However, and as I was soon to learn, there is a vast difference between knowing this intellectually and living it experientially. Ironically, perhaps, I was to find out just how the link between theory and experience could prove problematic.
"A Cautionary Tale..." continued:
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/qualiti/forums/viewtopic.php?p=27&sid=51a8d434b93fed96a6fd67d31f9e3cd6
by Pat Sikes, University of Sheffield
by way of Growing Up Sexually Topica E-mail:
In November last year, an education lecturer at Sheffield university made the headlines with a then unpublished paper.
http://www.tes.co.uk/2153925
http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article326343.ece
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47374
The paper is:
Sikes, P. (pending publication) ‘Scandalous Stories and Dangerous
Liaisons: When Male Teachers and Female Pupils Fall in Love’ Sex
Education--as cited in an April 4 reflection, by the prof, with a reply by Epstein, a well known author in the field of education and gender.
>related: ESRC Media Training
Website: Overheard In New York
for example...
Damn That Whole Foods Hot Bar
Commuter dude #1: The cars on this line feel smaller.
Commuter dude #2: Yeah, it's like they're narrower by just a bit or something.
Commuter dude #1: Oh wait; I think people are just fatter.
--1 train, Upper West Side
more: http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/
June 25, 2006
We Don't Do That Here
(We Help Them Do It Over There)
Weaponized Bulldozers
~Caterpillar produces the D9 Bulldozer in America (Wiki article), and adds armor for the Israeli's but outside that unfortunate cult's incineration in Waco,Texas a few years back we don't use Caterpillars bulldozers that way.
I knew Israel routinely bulldozed or blew-up the residences of those who attacked or displeased them. Summarily punishing without the bother of trial whole families of accused Palestinian wrong-doers.
But it wasn't until today when I first saw the term 'weaponised bulldozer' and read the story* that I understood what the Caterpillar Corporation was willing to do to please their Israeli customers.
*US: Caterpillar Pressured Over 'Weaponized Bulldozers'
>related:
Author Claims Israeli Army Bulldozes Houses with People Inside
"Once the Israeli Army banned the use of human shields, it had to come up with another way of extracting the Palestinian guerrillas from their hideouts. Hence the bulldozer. Of course, this method is much more dangerous for the family inside...
story by Haim Watzman; the author of "Company C: An American's Life as a Citizen-Soldier in Israel."
~Note the matter-of-fact language he uses to report this war-crime.
Gaze Detector Lets You Hear With Your Eyes
Manabe Hiroyuki (pictured) at NTT DoCoMo took the time to develop and create the wearable headphone gaze detector...
"...with this system you could not only record the goings on of your days and "bookmark" important events, but also train the cameras to feed you information about your surroundings based on QR codes (QR Code-Wiki Article) or possibly eventually object recognition, think of it as augmented aural reality triggered by giving a passing glance."
press release | EndGadget
Google Image Search: Terrorism OR Terrorist
american+muslim+OR+islamic+terrorist+OR+terrorism (277 image results)
white+supremacist+OR+racist+terrorist+OR+terrorism (18 image results)
[google: homegrown terrorist OR terrorism @ \ not from above links]
~We forgot Oklahoma City? Did it really only take two men to kill all those people? One might've thought that a crime of that magnitude would've required many more arrests and prosecutions, whether legitimate or not. Especially when compared to how aggressive the DOJ became after 9/11.
In trying to understand the gov't's response to the bombing of the Murray Building one could be reminded of Sherlock Holmes', "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
We know who our enemies are.
Home Grown TV News
At the DOJ's well-publicized (three-city) news conference, an FBI official said the activities of The (Miami) Seven were "more aspirational than operational," by which I think he was trying to explain that The Seven conspired to do bad things, but never actually got around to doing them.
So, as this story unfolds, it might be a good idea to remember that since 9/11 the Justice Department has developed this habit of summoning every reporter on the planet to hear and report dire charges that somehow never quite find their way to court.
Jose Padilla is, of course, the poster-boy for this kind of legal sleight of hand. When his arrest was announced - at another well-attended press conference - the DOJ told us this American citizen planned to blow up buildings and bridges with a "dirty bomb." But when he was finally charged - after three years in largely incommunicado military detention - the "dirty bomb" charge was nowhere to be found.
Padilla is not alone; this kind of pre-trial hype has become something of a pattern at the Justice Department...
article by William Fisher
~Lifetime careers in law enforcement are made from investigations and indictments like this. It only takes one big one.
You ever wonder how many DOJ officers and clerks the Miami Seven were/are keeping busy? How much this investigation cost? Do you think the Miami Seven will be on any of their Christmas-card lists? Does the DOJ issue medals or bonuses? Letters of commendation? Audiences with the President?
A google advanced news search today for "homegrown terrorists terrorism" (without the words canada canadian) links to 1,400 news stories.
The same advanced news search: "homegrown terrorists or terrorism" without the words canada canadian muslim muslims islamists islamism al qaeda links to 117 news stories.
Today Google has collected 45 stories that mention the Miami Seven's Christian connection.
[i.e. a google advanced news search for homegrown+christian with at least "terrorist or terrorism" without the words "canada canadian" )
Is 'muslim' the new gay?
June 24, 2006
Overheard at Starbucks
"My investments are making money as we sit here...while I sleep. What stocks have you bought? What do you own that generates income?
...You with your paltry wages, your breeder wife and bastard kids are speed-bumps on America's economic highway of fiscal responsibility and independence...What surplus do you create?"
---"Soylent Green is people?"
June 23, 2006
Facial Surgery Tutorials
http://www.facialsurgery.com/PPgintraoperative_intro.html
>with this!:
"If you are squeamish about seeing the intra-operative photos, we have a feature that might work for you: image cloaking. With image cloaking enabled, when you read the tutorials, any graphic photograph will be blanked out so you can't see it. You can display a "cloaked" photo simply by clicking on it, and then clicking again to turn the photo off if you decide against having it displayed. A checkbox that allows you to turn the image cloaking option on or off appears at the bottom of every tutorial page. ...If you think you'll probably be able to handle the photos, don't bother with cloaking. Most people do just fine."
above link by way of Sensible Erection
Fun in the Great Outdoors
Nature Surveillance
Underground facilities
see also: night view
June 22, 2006
Lyrics: MysteryTrain
Train arrive 16 coaches long
Train arrive 16 coaches long
Well that long black train
Took my baby back home
Train train rolling round the bend
Train train rolling round the bend
Well it took my baby
Away from me again
Went down to the station
To meet my baby at the gate
Ask the station master
If her train is running late
He said no if your wait
on that old 44
I hate to tell you son
But that train don't stop her anymore
Train train rolling round the bend
Train train rolling round the bend
Well it took my baby
Away from me again
Heard that whistle blowing
It was the middle of the night
When I got down to the station
The train was rolling out of site
Mystery train rolling round the bend
Mystery train rolling round the bend
Well it took my baby
Away from me again
Movie: Pulse 2006
Imagine our wireless technologies made a connection to a world beyond our own. Imagine that world used that technology as a doorway into ours. Now, imagine the connection we made can't be shut down. When you turn on your cell phone or log on to your e-mail, they'll get in, you'll be infected and they'll be able to take from you what they don't have anymore -- life."
[screen cap: @\ not IMDb]
IMDb's page about Pulse
>Diederik says, "Sounds like I dont have to imagine it."
~To which me (& Yeats) could add, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
Russian Floating Nuclear Power Plant
>Small capacity reactor
MOSCOW - An Arctic military shipbuilding plant and Russia's Atomic Power Agency signed a contract Wednesday to build the world's first floating nuclear reactor.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13316942/
via Unknown News
>related on Spitting Image from February Floating Nuclear Power Plants which I was sure was Russian science fiction.
~I wonder if my town will let me put a tiny, for a single dwelling only, nuclear reactor in my koi pond?
Mystery Planes Getting Around
"the...likely explanation is that the FBI is using the Delaware identity for its new generation of spy planes, equipped with sophisticated optics to watch people on the ground. In 2003, the Bureau admitted to flying a tricked-out 182 over several communities near Indianapolis to keep tabs on customers of internet cafes and copy shops.
story | 27B Stroke 6 via Unknown News
~Mystery planes, mystery ships, mystery trains...all very Fortean, or not.
Book Review: One Percent Doctrine
Book details Bush-Cheney's "One Percent" response to 9/11
• Credit card transactions routed to FBI
• Mentally ill man tortured, touted as major al Qaeda player
• And President Bush's response to the infamous briefing
where he was told bin Laden was determined to strike America:
The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."
review | Unknown News
MIT Scientists Ask Biologists to Imitate Engineers
In 2003, (Professor Drew) Endy and others set up the Standard Registry of Biological Parts. The idea was to get biologists to write interoperable plug-ins in DNA code. These plug-ins are described in an online database and stored in a freezer at MIT.
All researchers have to do is follow a set of assembly rules when designing their genetic gizmos...But few biologists are putting their inventions into the registry.
Most scientists have an "unengineering" mind-set, according to Tom Knight, a senior scientist at MIT who designed computer systems before turning to the intersection of computation and biology.
Scientists embrace complexity, he said, while engineers shun it; part of the engineering mind-set is a willingness to follow standards.
...Endy has hit on a new solution, The Office of Biological Dis-Enchantment... Instead of asking biologists to design genetic gizmos to spec and contribute them to a registry, he said he wants to collect descriptions of failed experiments, put them in a database and mine for fundamental sources of error.
Whether it can really bridge the gap between biologists and engineers remains to be seen.
story | ExtremeNano
[illus. google: dna patents/ not above link]
~This article doesn't mention any economic reasons that might prevent biologists from being more like engineers. I'm not at all sure that patent laws are to blame but "scientists embrace complexity, while engineers shun it" sounds lame. Here's a link to an NSF table showing the number of human dna sequence patents by country from 1980-1999.
Movie Review: Road to Guantanamo
Beyond the Multiplex
"I think the unsettling power of Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross' film stems from its contradictions. It combines documentary elements -- interviews with the three young British Muslims known as the "Tipton Three," from their hometown outside Birmingham -- with a harrowing fictional re-creation of what they say happened to them after they were taken prisoner in Afghanistan.
It offers the most scathing possible critique of American (and British) tactics in the so-called war on terror, but only by way of a story whose details cannot be verified.
The Road to Guantánamo" challenges American viewers to confront the possibility (note that word, please) that the worst fantasies of the Chomskyite left fringe have already come to pass. In other words, the possibility that the country some of us still believe is capable of fulfilling the rhetoric of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt has already become a new kind of totalitarian superstate, enforcing consumer narcosis at home with a borderless secret-police apparatus that spans the globe. At the same time, the film cannot dispel other hypotheses: Maybe the Tipton Three are a complete anomaly, and everybody else sent to Gitmo is a hardened al-Qaida assassin. Maybe the Tipton Three are not the hapless bozos they appear to be, but decided to prey on the sympathies of weak-minded liberal journalists after their release.
We're going to hear all these theories, and more besides, as this film percolates into the American consciousness. My point, ladies and gentlemen, if I have one, is this: "The Road to Guantánamo" will drive you crazy, if you aren't crazy yet. It documents a period of acute insanity, and all possible responses to it will sound paranoid to someone.
complete review by Andrew O'Hehir | Salon
thanks Conscientious
~This film "documents a period of acute insanity": all praise be to Allah that's all over now?
Art: Two Cities
>Live file-mixing
Long-Distance Media Relationships
For three years, Chicago, Illinois-based artist John Kannenberg and Long Beach, California-based artist Glenn Bach have been collaborating cross-country. The two gather data, photos, sound, and other materials on their daily walks and upload them to the internet, to compare their respective residences.
Next Sunday they'll take their collaboration across the pond, participating in a performative round of live file-mixing hosted at London's E:vent and organized by Furthernoise and curator Roger Mills. The curious can visit the space to witness the actions unfolding and see large-scale projections, but those stateside or elsewhere can also go online to watch the remixers work. At the end of the initial session, as Alex Young constructs post-performance soundscapes, audience members can also participate by uploading their own files and mashing-up their own MP3s or maps. The resulting images might resemble something like a 'global village.' --- Marisa Olson | Rhizome
http://www.eventnetwork.org.uk/programme/performances/207
BP Test RFID Network at UK Plant
During the six-week trial, BP is placing the new active RFID tags on 20 to 40 chemical containers stored at its petrochemical plant in Hull, England.
The CoBIs-(Collaborative Business Items) developed RFID tags are designed to monitor the ambient conditions around them and provide alerts when required, according to predetermined business rules. Each tag carries an accelerometer (movement) sensor, a wireless transceiver, up to 10 kilobytes of memory and other computing components for storing and processing business rules. The tags use a proprietary peer-to-peer protocol to communicate with each other. Each node transmits not only its unique ID number but also details of its environment and content, both type and volume, to all other nodes within a 3-meter range.
These communications help determine if business rules—such as the total volume of stored chemicals allowed in this location—have been violated. In addition, they can help ensure that potentially reactive chemicals have not been stored close to each other, that storage conditions are acceptable and that shelf life has not been exceeded. If a business rule is breached, then an alarm can be raised, either on the tag (with a warning light) or in the management application software. The network of nodes communicates with a wider corporate network via base stations.
According to BP, it is essential that the company have the ability to change the business rules on each sensor tag over a network, instead of having to visit each sensor node physically to update it.
complete press release
~Do you think CoBis RFID tags software will automatically create two sets of data? One encrypted set that measures the actual number of alarms and breaches and another batch of unencrypted data that automatically conforms to EU regulations governing the movement and storage of these chemicals? Or will the software automatically update the business rules over the network before any (less than critical?) alarms can be raised?
If human beings are no longer required to periodically sniff and poke around in close proximity to where dangerous chemicals are stored, does that decrease or increase the chances of accidents? We'll find out soon enough?
NY: Dashboard Alcohol Sensor OK'd
The law establishes a new crime category of aggravated driving while intoxicated for drivers with a blood-alcohol content of 0.18 percent or higher. Motorists convicted of ADWI will be required to have an ignition interlock system installed in their vehicle while on probation. The car will not start if a certain alcohol level is detected when the driver blows into an alcohol sensor on the dashboard.
story | JournalNews
~This How to Find a Lawyer article states:
"Depending on the situation, those convicted of drunk driving can endure punishments that range from a suspension or revocation of a license to a long stay in prison.
The average consequence, at least in forty-five states in America, is that those who have committed DUI offenses are permitted to drive again, but only if their vehicles are equipped with ignition interlocks, sophisticated equipment that tests a driver’s breath for alcohol content."
I did not know so many states had passed laws requiring that drunk drivers install ignition interlocks on their cars.
Teen Pregnancy Stinks
a billboard in North Carolina
[photo from Ooze]
~You get the feeling, in North Carolina anyway, that tax-funded public-health information programs are just another way politicians reward their campaign contributors?
June 21, 2006
Abstracts: Discourse Power Resistance 5
“Research as a Subversive Activity"
Conference
20 – 22 April 2006
Manchester Metropolitan University , UK
>for example
Anne Harley
Centre for Adult Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Picturing reality: power, ethics and politics in using visual research methods
Paper and photographs
The author was involved in recent research into barriers to learning (including HIV/AIDS) in a small rural town in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The research used a variety of qualitative participatory research methods, including photo voice, a method in which research participants take photographs and then decode these together with the researchers. Rich, thick data was obtained as a result, and the researchers found this method a particularly useful one in dealing with the ‘unspoken’ and working with marginalised people. The method is also a potentially powerful political tool in exposing and exploring deepening levels of poverty and crisis of the marginalised in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly because of the emotive nature of photographs. However, the method raises issues of ethics and researcher-researched power - if the subject of a photograph consents to the use of the photograph, is this ethically acceptable in the light of the imbalance of power between the subject and the researcher, particularly in the light of HIV/AIDS discrimination? The paper looks at some of the photographs taken and what they ‘mean’, and explores these issues of power and ethics in using this kind of method. @
>also...
Sex, Science and Educational Research: the unholy trinity
Ian Stronach, MMU
Jo Frankham, Manchester University
Sheila Stark, MMU
Abstract
This article examines the state’s contemporary construction of ‘sex’ as an educational problem in England. It does so by interrogating the notion of the ‘pregnant teenager’ as it is semantically and statistically constructed in accountability discourses, as well as research constrained within them. It then examines certain features of an exemplary solution to the problem, as proferred by one of the largest contemporary research projects into sex education in the UK (the RIPPLE project). A critique is offered of the ‘scientific’ nature of some of these findings. We claim conclusions to be undermined by statistical and rhetorical gerrymandering, a prejudicial rendering of pupil ‘voice’, and an underlying reductionism. The article concludes that many of the features of such current problem-constructing and solution-rendering can be characterised as a false invocation of ‘Science’, and that their conjunction fuels an enduring infantilisation of educational discourses about sex and sex education.
complete abstract
many more "Research as Subversive Activity" abstracts:
http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/dpr/abstracts/
>from Sex, Science and Educational Research: the unholy trinity
"What is the problem? The problem is straightforward: it is ‘rates of teenage pregnancy’ (Strange, Oakley, Forrest 2003: 201). It is ‘one of our most pressing health problems’ (DfEE: 1997). What is the solution? It is ‘developing more effective ways of delivering sex education’...
First, problems prefaced on the construct of ‘the pregnant teenager’, being by definition female, involve a covert exemption of the male. Impregnation, as male act, is not an auditable commodity. The ‘impregnating teenager’ is absent in accountability metrics and so we see – or more often fail to see - a silent substitution of the male by the female. In this way, female agency is foregrounded, activated as a focus for concern, while the male is ‘passivated’ in audit terms. Such an active/passive articulation is quite the opposite in most early sex education lessons, texts and parental accounts (Frankham 2006) where it is the ‘active sperm’ that fertilizes the ‘passive’ egg. As Moore points out, the story is also told in competitive terms, each sperm racing to its goal – ‘Come on Boys!’ (Moore 2003:290). The sperm is a ‘homunculus’, a little man (2003: 291). Laqueur adds that such depictions construct the process as ‘a miniaturized version of monogamous marriage’ (Laqueur 1990: 172). The boy takes the lead, proposes to the girl. The girl accepts the ring/seed. So sexual acts in sex education are written as male-led and analogous to a certain version of social relations between the sexes. These analogies, interestingly, are found in biological science as well, whereby the active/passive, donor/recipient ‘sexing’ of biological processes is common (Spanier 1991: 336). Science is not impervious to male sexism. But in the accountability audits of Official Sex there is a peculiar inversion; an ‘unhomunculated’ discourse is fabricated (Edwards et al 2004)6 : the little man disappears. On the other hand, pregnancy constituted as a female state is eminently measurable, and so in the audit culture females get pregnant, as it were, on their own. That conception is both immaculate and shaming, performing an underlying Madonna/whore dichotomy within the parameters of audit discourse and its mediatised expression. The very category of the ‘pregnant teenager’ thus helps constitute a discourse of Official Sex whose problem-construction is apparently based on ‘objective’ definitions and enumerations (counts, rates, tables etc) yet which removes male agency, and foregrounds female responsibility. In Official Sex, Official Science (the construction, measurement and narration of the problem as given) is an instrument of blame, bias and reduction, suggesting that ‘sex’ and ‘sex education’ begins with pregnancy, and works its way back to the sexual agency of the female. The ‘pregnant teenager’, then, is no simple statistic, nor any self-evident concept. In a double sense, she is guilty as conceived..."
complete article
http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/respapers/papers-pdf/stronach_frankham.pdf (pdf 125KB)
by way of Growing Up Sexually
Judge Seeks More Evidence in Padilla Case
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke said Tuesday she agreed with claims made by defense attorneys that the indictment against Padilla and the others is "very light on facts" that would link the defendants to specific acts of terrorism or victims.
Hassoun, Padilla, Kifah Wael Jayyousi and two others who are in custody overseas are charged with being part of a North American terror support cell that provided money, recruits and supplies to al-Qaida and other violent Islamic extremist organizations. All have pleaded not guilty, with trial scheduled for this fall.
Prosecutors argued that most of the specifics were being turned over already, mainly in the form of more than 225 key phone intercepts. And there were 80 specific illegal acts alleged in the indictment, said Brian Frazier, an assistant U.S. attorney.
"What is terrorism but a random act of violence? It means anyone could be a victim at any time," Frazier said.
story | AP/Yahoo
>Rotten.com's Padilla bio.
>Spitting Images's Padilla entries
[photo from gneborg/not Padilla, AP]
Internet Detective
"Internet Detective, a free online tutorial designed to help students develop the critical thinking required for their Internet research, in the RDN (Resource Discovery Network) Virtual Training Suite at: http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/
The tutorial offers practical advice on evaluating the quality of websites and highlights the need for care when selecting online information sources to inform university or college work.
link to links: http://www.resourceshelf.com/2006/06/21/professional-reading-the-resource-discovery-network-debuts-internet-detective/
Biblio & Weblio: Space 2006
...which includes Internet resources, books, documents and reports — covers:
* Commercial Space
* International Cooperation
* Other Countries’ Programs
* Satellites
* Separate Space Force
* Space Control & Counterspace
* Space Debris
* Space Law, Policy and Doctrine
* Space Operations
* Space Warfare and Weapons
* Spacelift and Launching
http://www.resourceshelf.com/2006/06/17/bibliography-space-2006/ | ResourceShelf
EveryStockPhoto
http://everystockphoto.com/index.php
~for example...
...a search of everystockphoto with 'flag' results in 455 photos-- this could be one.
Overheard at Starbucks
"I don't care how many terrorists he's killed over there; he's a freakin' gangster. A pig-man."
---"Shhh! His friends will hear you; the walls have ears."
"Yeah sure comrade, whatever."
---"You think I'm kidding? You want to be on a list with Muslims and Mexicans?"
June 20, 2006
NSA Datamining: What Is it Good For?
"Suppose you looked at calls between two geographical points, and you could see what kind of pattern ordinary people had," said Olvi L. Mangasarian, co-director of the University of Wisconsin's Data Mining Institute. "Then you compare it to another pattern of calls that you know" are suspicious and try to develop a "classifier" — a software tool — to distinguish between them, he said. "It would be difficult — but it would be doable."
story | ZD Net
>much less specific: Links to Data Mining Sites
The Kutna Hora prayer book, a remarkable work from the latter 15th century, has this illustration of silver-mining on its title page. Depicted in the lower third are the miners of Kutna Hora at work underground. The middle part shows treatment of the ore while the upper part presents division of the yield. Crowning the picture are the Emperor's symbols.
The aptness of the analogy with data-mining could hardly be clearer.
[illus.& caption from UCDavis\ not above]
~Were there any great paintings of dung collectors?
Polygraph Abuse at NSA, CIA
Polygraph testing in Washington is out of control, with agencies not only using the machines for decisions that can break or end employees' careers but also refusing to honor other agencies' testing. Agency-spatting over who has the best polygraphs has forced some employees seeking clearances to be tested over and over again, the Washington Post reports.
story | ZDNet
~Is it any consolation that what they (would like to) do to us they did first to themselves?
'Thirst for Knowledge' May Be Opium Craving
>The Preference for Novel Concepts
Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix.
The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California.
I think we're exquisitely tuned to this as if we're junkies, second by second."
Biederman hypothesized that knowledge addiction has strong evolutionary value because mate selection correlates closely with perceived intelligence.
The same mechanism is involved in the aesthetic experience, Biederman said, providing a neurological explanation for the pleasure we derive from art.
"This account may provide a plausible and very simple mechanism for aesthetic and perceptual and cognitive curiosity."
~Isn't this description: "such and such a human activity produces natural opium-like substances in the brain" meaningless? Are there any activities that humans have engaged in for centuries that don't trigger a biochemical cascade of rewards for the brain?
I guess once they're able to quantify "competitive learning", they'll be able to tinker with it? Create a definitive test for it? Synthesize it?
Consumers Don't Pardon the Intrusion of Advertisements
A new study from the September issue of the Journal of Consumer Research shows that the more consumers are absorbed in the narrative flow of a story – a process known as transportation – the less likely they are to respond positively to the intrusion of advertisements. These findings have interesting implications for advertisers, many of whom pay more for "premium" ad placement that may actually deter consumers.
press release | Eureka Alert
~Do consumers also hold grudges against ads? How varied ARE our emotional responses to advertisements? I like to believe that I view most tv-ads like clockwork flies or ants at a picnic--minor annoyances that have nothing whatsoever to do with why I'm there--but is that exactly what THEY want me to believe?
[screen capture google\ not from above link]
Lyrics: Life is Fine
I went down to the river,
And I sit down on the bank
Thought about my baby,
So I jumped in and I sank
Yeah but I came up once and hollered
I came up twice and cried
I'll be dog-gone if you're ever gonna see me die for love
I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground
Thought about my baby
Thought I might have to jump down
Now you may see me hollar
You may see me cry--
But I'll be dog-gone if you're ever gonna see me die for love
I went up in a tower
Tall as a tree is tall
Thought about my baby
Thought I'ld let my fool self fall
You may hear me holler
You may see me cry--
But I'll be dog-gone if you ever gonna see me die for love
Cause life is fine
Life is fine
Life is fine
--Adapted from Langston Hughes | Sung by Madeline Peyroux
June 19, 2006
U.S. Looks at Nuclear Power
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- By 2020, almost one-quarter of U.S. electricity will come from nuclear power generated across the country. At least, that`s the vision of some U.S. lawmakers.
Most of the country`s 103 nuclear reactors, which account for approximately 20 percent of the country`s electricity, were built several decades ago...
According to the (Energy Policy Act of 2005)... legislation, the Energy Department will have a plan for this new generation of nuclear reactors by 2021, beginning with the construction of a prototype plant at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Sources of new nuclear energy are expensive. Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steven Kerekes priced a new plant at at least $2 billion. He said at this point, nine companies -- including General Electric and Westinghouse Electric Company -- have expressed interest in investment in nuclear energy.
If all goes according to plan, these companies could create 19 new plants by the early 2020s. Westinghouse Vice President Regis Matzie called the next decade of development a 'nuclear renaissance.'
press release | UPI via Monsters & Critics
>somewhat related:
NUCLEAR power could be cheaper than electricity produced by coal and gas, says a report commissioned by the Australian nuclear research and development body (the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation).
The report calculates that if Australia waits for about a decade — until nine modern power stations have been built overseas — the cost will drop to the point where nuclear power is competitive with gas and coal.
If Australia pushed ahead sooner, a nuclear power station would need significant taxpayer subsidy...
Greenpeace Australia's chief executive, Steve Shallhorn, said the whole report was "ludicrous" and it would be at least two decades before enough nuclear power plants had been built across the world to make Australia's feasible under the ANSTO model.
story "Nuclear Power 'Cheaper, Safer' than Coal and Gas" | The Age
~I wonder if private industry or taxpayer subsidies will be paying for America's nuclear renaissance? The UPI article above doesn't say.
[le big bang illus from google\ not above links]
Exploring the Spatial Configuration of Places Related to Homicide Events
Main findings indicated that victims and offenders are involved in homicide events that are relatively close to their homes. Victims had median distances of .06 miles and offenders .69 miles from their homes to the homicide events. Regardless of motive for homicide, the average distance between offender home and victim home was always the longest. For most motives, the distance between offender home and homicide event was the next longest and victim home to homicide event was the shortest...
Males were found to travel further to a homicide event than females, regardless of whether they were the victim or offender. Victims under 18 years of age had the shortest distance to homicide events while the opposite was the case for offenders–older offenders traveled the shortest distance to the homicide event. In terms of event characteristics, homicide events involving firearms were committed at the farthest location from the offender’s home compared to homicides committed with other weapons.”
http://www.ilj.org/publications/SpatialConfigurationofPlaces.pdf
(1.22 MB) | Docuticker
~It's a good thing that most murderers and their victims live so close to each other. It suggests that most killers have at least a passing acquaitance with whom they've murdered. Spree killers, serial killers and paid killers murder strangers. No one wants homicides to be impersonal.
[post-Katrina NOLA homicide victim\ not from above]
June 18, 2006
Hacking Your Vacuum Cleaner
Turn a Roomba into, well, anything
...a robot is a machine with sensors to perceive its environment, that thinks about what it perceives and performs some kind of physical action in response to that decision making. Getting the job done - for Roomba and Scooba, iRobot's vaccuming and floor-scrubbing robots, and the Packbots the US army uses to defuse bombs in Iraq - usually involves moving around. (iRobot CEO Colin) Angle calls his robots "inherently interactive".
You can make a Roomba even more interactive: iRobot has released the documentation for the Roomba SCI serial protocol, which lets you control the motors, LEDs and speakers, or get data from the various sensors....
The hackers at Make magazine dressed a Roomba in green and played Frogger with it in traffic. We've already seen the first Roomba cockfights. Hopefully, there will be some more productive uses as well; you could get a report on whether the dirtiest spot on the floor is always in the same place, experiment with new algorithms for how the Roomba gets round the room, or fit it with a webcam and use it as a security system that cleans the floor at the same time.
complete press release w/links | Register
True Crime: Officer Uses Taser on Homeless Woman
An Aspen police officer reportedly used a Taser on a 63-year-old homeless woman and may face disciplinary action, The Aspen Daily News Reported.
Officer Melinda Calvano fired two 50,000-volt bursts into Carol Alexy while trying to arrest the woman for suspected theft last week
...Calvano believed Alexy was stealing clothing from The Thrift Shop, and Alexy dropped a sweater and tried walking away from Calvano when the officer asked her to put her hands in the air and drop the garment.
Alexy collapsed on steps leading to another store, and Calvano warned her she would use her Taser unless Alexy stood up and cooperated.
Alexy was taken to a hospital for breathing complications and later was booked into the Pitkin County Jail...
~Officer Melinda was using her taser in lieu of a cattle-prod? She must have scared the tourists. As an Aspen Colorado police officer she probably doesn't get to use her taser often; certainly not as judiciously as for comparison Denver's cops. Officer Calvano probably thought Alexy was a safe bet and now she might have this incident blemish her permanent work-record. Pity. She should've picked a more anonymous homeless person to taser, but how could she have known Alexy had friends in the media? They don't teach that in the police academy.
Will Alexy's theft now be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, in order to limit the city's liability from a lawsuit? Pending Alexy's day in court and possible future litigation will Alexy be singled out by other members of Aspen's finest, working to right a perceived wrong incurred in the line of duty by one of their own?
Or will Alexy's media-angels keep her safe?
Life is hard, and then there's people and institutions that make it harder...and THEN you die.
The Boyhood Studies Forum
http://www.boyhoodstudies.com/board/
1. We set out to be wrecked.
[photo & caption from 'The Boy Castaways' Gallery\ not above]
June 17, 2006
African-American Youth Exposed to More Alcohol Advertising Than Their Peers
Washington, DC - Alcohol advertising on radio, television and magazines reached more African-American youth than their peers in 2003 and 2004 on a per capita basis, according to a report released today by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at Georgetown University.
press release w/link to report
~If alcohol sellers spend X amount of dollars for ads in this market on these radio shows they can guarantee sales worth Y amount of dollars plus-or-minus a small percentage? Is booze advertising more science then art? (I don't have a clue?)
[illus from AdBusters\ not above]
On-Demand Media Explodes
"The advent of on-demand devices and services such as TiVo®/DVR, iPod® with video, Video On Demand programming from cable/satellite TV providers and others is beginning to change the way content providers deliver media and the manner in which they are consumed.”
link to blurb & PDF press release | Docuticker
~Pity the poor advertisers.
Nothing yet on how on-demand consumers might be adapting the various devices and services in ways the content providers couldn't forsee?
(I like to believe if you change distribution, you also change content, somewhat.)
Military Experience & CEOs: Is There a Link?
Companies led by CEOs with military experience have outperformed the S&P 500 Index over the past three, five and 10-year periods by as much as 20 percentage points, according to a study by Korn/Ferry International, the premier global provider of executive search...
link to press release & study (pdf) | DocuTicker
~If we ask the Pentagon to stand down, do you think they'll give us our country back? Some of our tax dollars they haven't yet spent on future defense appropriations?
Maybe if we elect the Democrats, they'll convince the Pentagon to cut programs and be sensible?
(I wonder how much Bush's War in Iraq has to do with the above percentages: i.e. companies with defense contracts hire ex-military and are doing very very well?)
[illus. not from above links]
Overheard at Starbucks
"I was watching the "Ghost Whisperer"...Are dead people supposed to be attracted by false eye-lashes, fake boobs and country and western fashion; just like tv executives and focus groups?"
---"I see dead people too, all the time. But my dead are not poignant and confused; looking for their loved ones. They're bigots, druggies, alkies, sex-addicts, religious hypocrites, petty thieves, police informants and paranoiacs. Sad but vicious ordinary people organized in death like they never were when alive."
"Uber dead?"
---"They're furious with me for not being in awe of their non-existence, for seeing what tools they've become, for seeing right through them."
"Gangsta dead...the ungrateful dead...the spiteful dead."
---"They'll be the death of me."
June 16, 2006
Heaven's Above
If you're interested in satellites or astronomy, you've come to the right place! Our aim is to provide you with all the information you need to observe satellites such as the International Space Station...
Current position of the ISS
...and the Space Shuttle, spectacular events such as the dazzlingly bright flares from Iridium satellites as well as a wealth of other spaceflight and astronomical information.
We not only provide the times of visibility, but also detailed star charts showing the satellite's track through the heavens. All our pages, including the graphics, are generated in real-time and customized for your location and time zone.
>related from Feb.'06:
Molczan and the network have developed an almost zoological catalog of the many secret creatures that streak across the evening sky - and they've posted everything online. But there's one satellite whose information Molczan says he might not disclose. As it happens, it's also the one he cannot find.
Since the early '90s, he has been hunting a new, supersecret breed of satellite that has become a kind of white whale for the observers and a source of considerable controversy on Capitol Hill. Codenamed Misty, it's a multibillion-dollar stealth photoreconnaissance device that took the CIA and the NRO a decade to develop and was designed to be untrackable by Soviet adversaries. It began orbiting Earth in the spring of 1990, when it prompted a high-stakes hunt that obsesses the amateurs to this day.
For the observers, especially Molczan, finding Misty or its successor has taken on an almost mythological significance. In fact, in the 15?years he's been scanning the heavens for it, Molczan and some of his colleagues have developed a theory: Misty isn't just hiding - it's hiding from them.
Molczan's imagination may have gotten the better of him after his long search, but stealth technology of the sort deployed by aircraft and satellites does indeed work by specific targeting: Objects don't become completely invisible; they reorient themselves so they can't be seen from certain vantage points. Misty likely deflects the sun's rays to make itself imperceptible from a particular location on Earth.
"They know where we live," Molczan says excitedly. He believes that when it was originally launched into orbit, the satellite was programmed to be invisible to the Soviets, but the National Reconnaissance Office failed to take the hobbyists into account. Molczan is convinced that after reports of the observers' USA 53 sightings, the satellite was reprogrammed with the coordinates of every area where skilled hobbyists live. It sounds implausible, and he can't prove it, but to Molczan it's the only reasonable explanation.
complete article: I Spy | Wired
Bon Coiffure: Barbershop Signs from Africa
"...a collection of painted signboards from barber shops and hair-dressers in Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Togo and Kenya. Brightly painted in commercial housepaints on plywood or masonite..."
Barber's Sign (#bs254)
Unknown Artist, Kenya, c.1990's
Oil paint on plywood (16" x 30")
$165
gallery: http://www.indigoarts.com/gallery_barbersign_main.html
Surprise. For three years, the media salivates about killing people – the recent flurry of stories glorying in the fact that the bomb that eviscerated Zarqawi did leave him a number of hours of pain to give us bystanders that extra soupcon of pleasure, provides us with a recent example. And then we have a ‘volunteer army’ – which means, really, one half composed of shanghai-ed National Guard, who are properly supposed to serve only domestically, sent overseas in order to avoid disturbing the jammy comfort level of the people back home who are reveling in their high gas prices, their stagnant wages, and voting for their tax cuts. These kidnapped troops are being cycled and recycled through the killing fields, with the usual high rate of injury, and the mental terror of themselves having to kill Iraqis, since to kill always puts a dark spot on the brain; killing comes back, in dreams, in sudden starts, riding down the street in a car, arguing with the wife or the husband or the son or daughter. And of course the price is paid ten times over by the Iraqis themselves. So the mix has been made, we’ve all danced to the music, and just like the old Vietnam days, crime is starting to rise. Wow, is that a surprise?
complete blog entry | Limited, Inc
by-way-of Wood's Lot
[photo not with above]
Susan Kare User Interface Graphics Portfolio
(3 of 15) designed for various clients between 1983-2001
portfolio: http://www.kare.com/portfolio.html
Animefu
>reviews, discussions of anime product.
[illus. from a google image search]
U.S. Mum on Strength of Iraqi Troops
Pentagon stops revealing number prepared to fight
U.S. officials had been releasing a tally every three months of Iraqi military units that were sufficiently trained to operate by themselves, without the aid of U.S. firepower, logistics or transportation.
The decision to stop making the information public came after reports showed a steady decline in the number of qualified Iraqi units. That number now is classified, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Victor Renuart, director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
story | Hearst
by way of Secrecy News
~At my job when we don't meet the objectives we've set, head's roll.
Photo-caption Non Sequitur
>As found on Yahoo...
Texas-based student exchange student Ariel Alexander (L) performs a cartwheel while joking around with fellow student Brett Scott on the front lawn of Parliament Hill in Ottawa June 7, 2006. Security at Canada's Parliament buildings is under review after Canadian police arrested 17 Muslim men, five of whom are under the age of 18, on Friday and Saturday in the country's largest counterterrorism operation. REUTERS/Chris Wattie (CANADA) @
~The Texan thinks Canada has the death penalty?
Overheard at Starbucks
"There ARE people who can read others' minds?"
---"Not exactly 'read'. They 'hear' our internal monologues, a distinction not popularized by tv and the movies."
"People like you and me?"
---"Well not like you, but yeah, they're not so rare. There're thousands of them. If they survive past their tweens--they're not born with volume controls; closer is louder, closest is loudest---spooks in organized crime and the federal gov't ferret them out, train them and put them to work, usually in human traffiking."
"Imagine being rescued by spooks?"
---"They're all substance-abusers, but they're the most loyal bunch of addicts you'll find anywhere.
...They have a special name for people who don't have their unique talent: they call us screechers."
June 15, 2006
Verizon Launches Mobile Chaperone Service
Parents can use the service to set up geographic limits and receive text alerts if their children, who also carry phones, go too far from home. The service also lets parents check where their offspring are via a map on their cell phone or computer.
The Verizon service costs $9.99 a month for just the location-viewing feature and rises to $19.99 a month if the parent also opts for a boundary-setting feature. Sprint charges about $9.99 for its service.
Ex-Cops Sue Over Net-Sex Video
Palm Beach County deputy sheriffs who participated in Internet porn videos showing group sex, oral sex and masturbation sued after being fired.
In one of the photographs, the female was handcuffed and nude. The second photograph showed her partially clothed. While the viewer of the photographs would certainly draw the inference that the vehicle was associated with law enforcement, there were no clear identifying marks to associate the vehicle with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office."
At issue in the investigation is whether the deputies violated the Sheriff's Office's code of ethics, which says: "I will keep my private life unsullied as an example to all." Another requirement is that they seek prior approval before engaging in outside for-profit activity.
(the officers)...sued after being fired, saying their extracurricular on-camera sex was protected speech under the First Amendment.
~Guess how the appeals court ruled, for or against the constitutionality of the "employment restrictions"?
Explaining Disconnect Between Women, Video Games
Video game companies that...want to market to female gamers will provide a way for players to become acquainted with their characters, (Sheri Graner) Ray said, even allowing for an emotional attachment to develop. She suggested that some games could feature an interview section in the tradition of magazines like Seventeen and Tiger Beat, which run photos of teen idols alongside short Q&A sections that reveal casual details: hobbies, tastes and quirks.
In the long run, Ray said, female gamers need more than just action to stay involved...
How Racism Has Invaded Canada
...after the arrest of 17 Canadian Muslims on “terrorism” charges, the Toronto Globe and Mail and, to a slightly lesser extent, the National Post, have indulged in an orgy of finger-pointing that must reduce the chances of any fair trial and, at the same time, sow fear in the hearts of the country’s more than 700,000 Muslims
Without challenging the “facts” or casting any doubt on their sources — primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Canada’s leak-dripping Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) — reporters have told their readers that the 17 were variously planning to blow up Parliament, CSIS’s headquarters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and sundry other targets. Every veiled and chadored Muslim woman relative of the accused has been photographed and their pictures printed, often on front pages. “Home-grown terrorists” has become theme of the month — even though the “terrorists” have yet to stand trial.
story by Robert Fisk
~Looks like Canada's elite's as inbred as America's.
It's strange how another country's racism can appear so blatant.
Spider in Amber
Mesozygiella dunlopi was preserved in amber from Alava in Spain Image courtesy of David Penney | BBC
~Purported to be 150 million years old.
Kurt Cobain's Suicide Note vs. Google Ads
http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/kurt/
by way of Incoming Signals
"Mission Accomplished"...So Far
Mimi, Don't Dial 911
By Al Kamen
Wednesday, June 7, 2006; A21
Vice President Cheney 's been taking a few wholly unfair hits in recent days on the first anniversary of his observation that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes."
But, to be fair, "last throes" is a most elastic phrase. While it often means a relatively short period, let's not forget the young Mimi's tragic death throes in Act IV of Giacomo Puccini 's "La Boheme," which took her a good 20 minutes, including a long duet with her boyfriend, Rodolfo.
And we won't be shocked if the throes go on for quite a while longer, based on a May 6 cable we got the other day from Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad .
"Crime in Iraq is rated by the U.S. State Department as critical and will continue to get worse for the foreseeable future," the embassy in Baghdad reports in the cable, which was addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice .
"Crime, terrorism, and warfare are a significant threat in all parts of Iraq. Active military operations are ongoing. The Department of State continues to strongly warn U.S. citizens against travel to Iraq, which remains very dangerous. Remnants of the former regime, transnational terrorists, criminal elements and numerous insurgent groups remain active.
"Attacks against military and civilian targets continue throughout the country, including inside the international zone. These attacks have resulted in deaths and injuries of American citizens. Planned and random killings are common as are kidnappings for ransom and political reasons."
Now we all know that the Iraqi forc