December 31, 2006
Fingerprint Sensor Ends Need for Keys
...device uses a built-in fingerprint recognition system instead of a key to work the lock.
So householders only have to touch the BioKnob to get into their home, rather than have to search their pockets for a key.
A tiny sensor reads a fingerprint pattern when you brush a finger across it and the pattern is converted in to a template.
No picture of fingerprints are recorded, so no one can replicate them from the data.
The doorknob, which costs £255 and runs off rechargeable batteries, is also able to keep a record of the last 1000 entries.
That means parents can tell what time their kids come home.
And boss will be able to keep tabs on their workers' timekeeping.
The BioKnob was developed by US firm Tychi Systems.
President Sheng Deng said: "We wanted to bring technologies mostly seen in government agencies to consumers."
url | Daily Record UK
~This news item makes me want to get myself a expensive pair of gloves. I don't like thinking about the fingerprints I leave on everything I touch and corporations like Tychi Systems interest in them.
Wiki: Decollage
Décollage, in art, is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image. Examples include inimage or etrécissements and excavations.
more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decollage
for example:
by Jacques Villegle (large)
others (small) by Jack Villegle
Blog: Expanded Cinema
"...as part of a series focused mainly on experimental film, early video, and sound-based, durational work. All of the material is being pulled from available media online elsewhere, as part of emphasizing an overlooked facet of the archival function of new media." --Joao Ribas
http://expandedcinema.blogspot.com/
The Untouchables of US Science
Over the past five years the imperative of segregating all stem cell research has created a jumble of red tape. ... In...(Dr. Kevin) Eggan('s) lab each piece of equipment is marked with a sticker: green for privately funded machines that can be freely used; red for those bought by the National Institutes of Health, the federal funding body, which must not be used in stem cell research.
The most Kafkaesque is the yellow sticker. This is applied to equipment that is federally owned but where a deal has been reached: whenever a scientist uses the machine they record it in a book and the NIH is reimbursed.
In one room there are two cryostats, used to prepare tissue for the microscope, standing side by side. One has a green sticker, the other red. Someone has put a label above the red machine, showing Mr Bush pointing straight out and saying: "You there! No human ES cell sectioning on this machine!"
story | Guardian via TruthOut
December 30, 2006
Art: Khosrow Hassanzadeh
Faneshe / Prostitutes, 2002
Painting on silk-screen print
Police file photos of prostitutes that were published in the daily papers and served a serial killer, a self-declared "avenger" who had murdered a number of women, as orientation in the choice of his victims* url | IntArtData Artists
~*Isn't this an odd way to describe a killer's 'mo'? I'm guessing the killer after his arrest was found to have newspaper clippings of prostitutes pasted on his wall, or in a scrapbook...like some kind of anti-porn. Maybe he was schizophrenic and/or confessed that his newspaper photos "talked" to him.
In American tv crime dramas the scene of the stalker's room complete with a shrine of photos of his imagined sweetheart is a cliche. Yeah we get it; he's a dangerously obsessed fan, spurned boy-friend or pervert. But I don't think the script-writers are suggesting that without those disturbing photos he'ld be any less of a stalker.
In American crime fiction photo-obsessions confirm everyone's suspicions, they're not seen as instrumental in the commission of crimes. (Except for images of children of course.)
Many men have porn stashes. Some collect very specific sorts of images. Most men are not violent towards the objects of their obsessions.
Imaging Famine
http://www.imaging-famine.org/
[photo google: somalia children]
Innocents Abroad: Western Fantasies of Childhood and the Iconography of Emergencies.
Abstract (1994)
Burman E.
Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
In this paper I explore the emotional interests maintained by the imagery of children used in Third World emergencies. Boundaries between adult and child are reproduced through relations of paternalism between North and South, such that the infantilisation of the South exemplified in imagery of children works to secure the competence and maturity of the Northern donor. Drawing on both analyses of the cultural origins and meanings of concepts of childhood and psychoanalytic perspectives, I suggest that media coverage of disasters arouses both identification and strategies to ward off and protect from the anxiety this brings. The gendered as well as geographical distribution of qualities of children's innocence and experience are discussed, drawing on both general imagery of children and recent coverage of children and child-saving, particularly in the former Yugoslavia. Developing analyses of 'disaster pornography', the paper explores how children appear as the principal focal objects onto which attention is pinned and as the signifiers of distress. This is at the cost of dehumanizing both children, their families and their cultures, and rendering them passive objects of a western gaze which seeks to confirm its own agency and omnipotence to ward off its own insecurities. While aid organisations and campaigns necessarily engage with, and sometimes collude with, these reactions, the paper ends by suggesting that there may be strategies whereby images of children can function to comment on rather than maintain prevailing colonial and paternalistic relations.
PMID: 7953493 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
from Diederik
Refugee children from Trstenik walk...*(sfgate.com/.../1999/03/23/yugoslavia)
[photo google: yugoslavia children/ not PubMed]
~*Where are their parents?
>related Pictures for Change's "Resource Publications" (bibliography)http://www.djclark.com/change/resource.html
MySpace Tries To Root Out Sex Offenders
Stepping up efforts to keep sex offenders off MySpace.com, the popular social networking Web site has partnered with an online identity and background verification company to build a U.S. national sex offender database and dedicate staff to checking the database against MySpace profiles. Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. will build a searchable database containing information on sex offenders in the U.S. who are registered with various federal and state law enforcement agencies. The database, which will be frequently updated, will include details such as name, age, physical appearance and distinguishing features like tattoos and scars. MySpace staff will monitor the site 24-hours-a-day for sex offenders who are on the list. They’ll remove any matching profiles that they find. MySpace has been lobbying for new legislation that could help it take the program one step further. The company wants a law that requires sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses in a national sex-offender database. The law would stipulate that the use of an unregistered e-mail constitutes a parole or probation violation, forcing offenders back to jail. If such a law is passed, MySpace can more easily identify sex offenders that have profiles on its site, the company said.”
Can a private company have a private definition of the meaning of “sex offender?” Who, according to Fox News, is a sex criminal? Will they draw their information exclusively from court records? Or will they decide that the thousands and thousands of users who write about any “alternative” form of sexuality are also “offenders?”"
http://www.pervscan.com/2006/12/10/myspace-tries-to-root-out-sex-offenders/
by way of NetPorn Digest
thanks Diederik
Saddam Hanged at Dawn
The execution took place shortly before 6am (03:00 GMT) on Saturday at an Iraqi miltary facility in northern Baghdad.
Iraqi television later showed footage of Saddam being placed in a noose by hangmen, cutting away just before his execution.
The 69-year-old appeared calm, chatting+ to his hangmen as they wrapped his neck in black cloth and steered him towards the gallows
Iraqi television later showed footage of his body.
It was very quick. He died right away," an official Iraqi witnesses told the Reuters news agency.
"We heard his neck snap," said Sami al-Askari, a political ally of al-Maliki.
Another witness said: "He seemed very calm. He did not tremble."
As guards took him to the scaffold, according to witnesses, Saddam said: "There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet."++
Iraqi Shias in Sadr City celebrated the
death of the former Iraqi leader. | AFP from Al Jazeera
story | Al Jareeza
>Compare & constrast + &++ with: "His last words were equally defiant. "Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians."" from On the Gallows, Curses for US and "Traitors" By Marc Santora | New York Times
Update: 02/01/07 Baghdad - Hundreds of Sunni Arabs gathered to show their anger and grief for Saddam Hussein on Tuesday as the Iraqi government promised an investigation into illicitly filmed footage of Shi'ite officials taunting him on the gallows.
story | TruthOut
~So in Saddam's last minutes was he chatting, praising God & Mohammed, cursing & defiant or taunted by his hangmen?
Noteworthy as an example of the many uses the living can have for dead tyrants:
Al Jareeza's eye-witnesses to the execution report chatting and a calm prayerful Saddam; the NYTimes translator watching the video hears cursing and defiance; while his followers see Saddam being taunted by his jailers.
~I'm guessing Saddam's Sunni relatives are more outraged by the execution and its video then they are by the gallows taunting.
A frame grab from Biladi shows former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's body after his execution in Baghdad December 30, 2006. Hussein was hanged for crimes against humanity at dawn on Saturday....IRAQ OUT REUTERS/Biladi TV (IRAQ)| Yahoo News
~Yahoo News at this hour has time-stamped four versions of this image: AFP via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Dec 30 3:47 AM; AFP via Yahoo! Canada News - Dec 30 3:47 AM; AFP/Biladi TV via Yahoo! News - Dec 30 4:31 AM and Reuters via Yahoo! News - Dec 30 6:02 AM
Google News didn't post the above Reuters' screen grab until 21:00GMT. I don't understand the reason for Google's delay. Google automatically updates Reuters(?) image feeds sometime before 6:00AM EST and again at 21:00GMT? (AFP images don't appear on Google.)
Fox News at this hour has a slide-show of the execution with the same two Saddam images above. Which means if Fox News has the Biladi TV videos, it's only permitted to use the AFP/Reuters video grabs on it's news site? No other screen caps from those videos...because of copywrite restrictions?
When will the uncut version of Saddam's execution find its way to YouTube?
As of 22:00GMT Al Jareeza News did not show images of Saddam's dead body.
As of 23:45GMT CNN Video has no "execution" or "body" videos.
Was it necessary that the Americans allowed this execution to be video-taped? Was Saddam that much of a celebrity, that many Iraqis wouldn't believe he's dead unless they saw it with their own eyes?
Or was it neo-con Christian cruelty:the cherry on top of Bush's occupation of Iraq?
>from Salon: Saddam: The death of a dictator
Through the bumbling of the U.S.-backed regime, justice becomes revenge, and a despot becomes a martyr. By Juan Cole article
>Update: 5 Jan 07 Bush Wishes Saddams Death More Dignified
Bush spoke with Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki for nearly two hours Thursday in a conference call and voiced support for the probe, [into the taunts at the former Iraqi president moments before he dropped from the gallows] which is also pursuing how a cell phone was used to capture video of the execution. The images were leaked to the public.
"I wish that the proceedings had gone in a more dignified way," Bush said at a White House press conference with German chancellor Angela Merkel.The execution was carried out days after an Iraqi court upheld his November conviction and death sentence.
The release of the video sparked outrage among Iraq's minority Sunni Muslim population, which served as the base for Saddam's decades of rule. Shias in the room, some believed to be prison guards, were heard shouting at Saddam as the noose was tightened around his neck. One individual told him: "Go to hell."
story | IndiaTimes
also: Master Sgt. Robert Ellis, a senior medical adviser responsible for Hussein's care in Baghdad, praised the stoicism displayed by Hussein. “Saddam,” he said, “was gangsta.” A Texas 10-year-old who had seen video footage of the execution died after hanging himself from his bunk bed [STL Today][Reuters via MSNBC]
--from Harpers Weekly Review
December 29, 2006
Public Art Can Be Fun
http://www.ruygrok.com/nlsite/Foto%2011.htm
http://blogger.xs4all.nl/hkeijser/archive/2006/12/27/165080.aspx
by way of Conscientious
~Ja.
New Sensor to Detect Landmines
The acoustic array developed by Robert Haupt, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, looks like a dart board and emits highly concentrated beam of sound waves at high ultrasonic frequencies aimed at the minefield.
Through a process known as self-demodulation, the air in front of the beam converts the ultrasound to lower frequency audible sound as it travels over a distance of about 10 metres.
Unlike ultrasound, audible sound can travel through the ground. When the highly concentrated sound waves hit a solid object, they cause it to vibrate.
The vibrations make their way to the surface where they are detected by a laser system that measures vibrations in the ground, reported the online edition of New Scientist.
Tests in the US suggest that the prototype could reveal hidden mines more accurately than the devices currently in use. The cost of the new system would be considerably more than hand held metal detectors.
While the new system can scan flat open fields quickly and efficiently, sloping terrain or thick vegetation could obscure the view of the ground that the laser system requires to detect vibrations.
...hand held metal detectors...have a limited range and so can miss mines that are deeply buried. Plastic mines...go unnoticed.
...metal detectors...can only be used by minesweepers inside a minefield.
British Medical Journal: Sword Swallowing & Its Side-Effects
>"Sore throats are common."
>link to above plus other unusual full-text papers from the 23 December 2006 issue of the BMJ: http://www.docuticker.com/?p=9744
Intimate Partner Violence in the US
The number of intimate partner homicide victims has declined since 1993, with greater declines seen for male victims. During 1993, the number of females murdered by intimates was 1,571, compared to 1,159 during 2004 –– a 26 percent decline. The number of males murdered by partners during 1993 was 698, compared to 385 –– a 45 percent decline.
Overall intimate partner violence during 2004 remained unchanged from 2003, although...Non-fatal intimate partner violence for white males increased from 0.5 to 1.1 victimizations per 1,000 males age 12 and older.
press release | BJS
by way of http://www.docuticker.com/
5 Online-Dating Resolutions
>In 2003, North Carolina-based freelance writer Margot Carmichael Lester vowed to meet her match online. It worked. She and he are now married.
We all make online resolutions to lose weight or get in shape. But what about our love lives? Couldn’t we use a little improvement in our chances for romances? Odds are, the answer is yes.
A lot of people start dating online at the beginning of the year. Take advantage of the increase in volume (more potential soul mates), and resolve to give online dating a try. Here are five resolutions to help you get started.
item | MSNBC
>related: Online Dating Services Reviewed
http://online-dating-review.toptenreviews.com/
more from Marry An Ugly Millionaire
December 28, 2006
Flatulent Turtle Sets Off Alarms
...after being fed a Christmas treat of Brussels sprouts.
It broke wind and the bubble it created was so strong, it set off an emergency sensor inside its tank at the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth, Dorset, yesterday.
It indicated the water was at a dangerously high level, so marine biologist Sarah Leaney rushed to the aquarium.
story | Daily Record
Art: 100 Girls & 100 Octopuses
99 more http://www.zaxart.com/octopus_girls/
via Aberrant News
Arresting Images
>for example
aka "Voodoo Chile" @
"Along with the starlets and superstar athletes, we've included some of TSG's (The Smoking Gun's) favorite mug shots, images of the not-so-famous that chronicle the rich assortment of American misbehavior."
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/index.html
Cloned Meat Could Be On Next Year's US Christmas Menu
'Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day," said Stephen Sundlof, director of veterinary medicine for the Food and Drug Administration.
The high cost of raising clones makes it unlikely that any will be introduced directly into the food supply, except the occasional dairy cow past the age of producing milk. The number of cloned cows, pigs and goats in the US is believed to be in the low hundreds.
A poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology this year found 64% of Americans uncomfortable with the idea of eating food from clones.
story | Guardian
~There should be a joke here.
>related Livestock's Long Shadow
...to help raise the attention of both the technical and the general public to the very substantial contribution of animal agriculture to climate change and air pollution, to land, soil and water degradation and to the reduction of biodiversity.
press release & link to pdf report: http://www.docuticker.com/?p=9680
AlphaPsy Primers
"...short introductions to various topics in the fields of evolution, cognition, and culture. It is chielfy aimed at social scientists with no background whatsoever in the domain. Each primer includes a link to the relevant AlphaPsy Bibliography, which is particularly suited for beginners."
complete intro.
link to primers' links:
http://www.cognition.ens.fr/~alphapsy/blog/?Alphapsy-primers
[logo not from AlphaPsy]
AlphaPsy Primer: Culture Introduced
>bibliography
Cognitive Anthropology is concerned with two related questions : what is a human brain, so that it can apprehend culture ? what is culture, so that it can pass through a human brain ?
http://www.cognition.ens.fr/~alphapsy/theme.en.php?id=e23
Waste: A Sexual Critique of Consumerism
...consumerism is what happens when a smart ape evolved for obsessive sexual self-promotion suddenly attains the technological inventiveness and social organization to transform the raw material of nature into a network of sexual signals and status displays. It transmutes a world made of quarks into a world of tiny, unconscious courtship acts. Every thing becomes a product, every product becomes a signal, and every signal becomes sexual. Yet most sexual signals go unrecognized, unappreciated, and unreciprocated. The result is that fascinating phenomenon we call modern civilization, with its glory and progress, to be sure, but also with its colossal waste and incalculable alienation.
Consumerism’s trouble is not that it is tainted by sexuality, or that material acquisition is some Freudian sublimation of sexual conquest. On the contrary, the problem is that human sexuality is tainted and mediated by consumerism.
more http://www.unm.edu/~psych/faculty/waste.htm by Geoffrey F. Miller
(Published as: Miller, G. F. (1999). Waste is good. Prospect, Feb., pp. 18-23.)
[ad photo/scan: fearless luxury not from above link]
A Prayer to the Faith Based
I’m sorry, and I don’t mean to offend you,
And you didn’t even ask for this but
I’m going to put in a plug for your beliefs
So that you won’t get too mad at me as I utter words
With which you or someone you know may not agree,
(No matter how utterly wrong you may happen to be)
It is good that you are religious
And I will personally defend your right to believe
Whatever it is you do in fact believe,
And I affirm that it is OK to put
Phrases regarding your beliefs on my money
And for you to assume that
I will swear to your god
when I am on jury duty
when I am drafted into the army
when I am elected to office
when I am in the witness stand
and whenever else I must affirm
that I am moral and will not lie.
i Will Capitalize Your Word for God
And the Name of Your Holy Book
And Other Entities and Documents
As You Dictate These Rules To me.
I offer this pandering to your particular beliefs,
regardless of what they may happen to be,
despite the fact that your cultural ancestors,
the mavens and leaders of one church or another,
burned at the stake or otherwise humiliated mine,
The early scientists and freethinkers,
I affirm this because I cannot at the moment
Remember where I put my spine.
blog entry/comments: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/not_my_prayer_thats_for_sure.php#comments
~If you've the time try this exercise: whenever you hear someone use the word 'god' try to imagine what this particular person's god might look like. How would this person picture god whose name he or she is using? What might be the one big thing for them that makes god, god? Try and put a face on god, give god a form.
God for many people takes on the aspects of a utility drawer or a briefcase containing their lunch, their work, brilliant light and infinite goodness, or a magic ATM favor-dispensing machine, or a password.
You can also try to picture various objects everytime you hear someone use the word god. So 'god' might become a silk tie, or an earring, a lipstick smear, contact lenses, a lapel flag-pin, a painting, statue, flickering candle, furniture, the rug, etc.
Or you can try picturing various media images in place of god. So the word god might invoke the image of the burned naked VietNamese girl running in terror from her village, or President Bush trussed-up as a fighter pilot on that aircraft carrier, or the Grand Canyon, a foaming-mug of beer, Nemo dodging bullets in slow-motion, Britney Spears exiting a limousine; or any one of the thousands of broadcasted and reproduced for mass consumption images each of us carry with us whether we want to or not. God is in the details.
[photo google/ not from above link]
December 27, 2006
Queer Horror Awards
The Queer Horror Awards were created to honor works that involve significant, and generally positive, portrayal of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender characters, issues or themes within the area of horror. Horror, for the purposes of these awards, includes things traditionally considered horror, as well as dark fantasy, noir, and even other genres if they are dealing with significant horror elements, such as ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or other monsters.
Many types of items are appropriate for these awards, and include (but are not necessarily limited to):
movies
tv shows
short stories
novels
scholarly articles
Nominations for the awards are open to the public...
http://www.queerhorror.com/awards/
~"Never mind the beasts."*
[* + screen cap google: queer horror]
On Secret Interpol Files
Comparing crime rates across borders is notoriously difficult, primarily because of the different definitions of different categories of crimes (e.g. is a suicide a murder or not ?), but also because of different approaches to policing: rape reporting to the police varies from country to country and it seems the way the police treat victims has a large impact on the likelihood of reporting.
There are two main approaches to collect crime statistics : (i) based on crimes reported to the police and (ii) by polling a representative sample of the population...
...for reported violent crime, a better source than statistics from individual countries, which are distorted by differing national crime definitions, are international comparative statistics by Interpol, which are said to be based on more standardised definitions of crime categories. However, intriguingly, Interpol's international crime statistics have recently been removed from its website. Clearly, such information needs to be hidden from ordinary citizens(who are paying Interpol with their taxes) to prevent them from reaching any wrong judgments...
In the latest published ICVS, (International Crime Victim Survey 2003?) the percentage of the population which claims a personal experience of crime (excluding murder) during the preceding twelve months is higher in all countries than official statistics would lead one to assume : ranging from 16.4% in Norway to 31.5% in the Netherlands. The US (24.2%) and Canada (25.2%) are both average.
more stats/complete article http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1758
~Concerning the stats from the International Crime Victim Survey would it be fair to question what percentage of people are claiming a personal "first-hand" experience with these crimes? (And not a friend of a friend...)
Could this survey more accurately measure a population's perceptions of (certain) crimes, rather then unreported crimes?
Are some countries more crime aware or survey friendly than others?
Do populations experience the same crimes in the same way?
Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006
>for example:
Prove You're Not a Traitor" Prize - CNN's Glenn Beck.
In November, Beck - an Islamophobic host on CNN Headline News - launched into his interview with Congressman-elect Keith Ellison, a Muslim American, this way: "I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.'" Beck then added: "And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way." Is it possible that prime-time bigots like CNN's Beck have something to do with the prejudices "that a lot of Americans feel"?
article by Norman Solomon | TruthOut
December 26, 2006
Interview: Photographer Will McBride
http://www.dhm.de/magazine/fotografen/mcbride121.html
link to interview:
http://www.amadelio.com/vlog/2006/10/17/vlog-videoblog-will-mcbride-photographer-painter/ (requires quicktime)
via http://lists.topica.com/lists/growingupsexually/
>Will McBride's Wiki article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_McBride_(photographer)
~Compare & contrast the staged photo here and the ones mentioned in the Vlog interview with the many "Bondage in Everday Life" photos below.
"Bondage in Everyday Life" Photos
>for example from "The Amazing Church Camp"
gallery
other photo galleries http://mediablog.ilaugh.com/uhhh.clem/blog/entry.html?id=3064
home/info. http://www.thebielsite.com/
Google News Search: "national conversation"
This past month Google News collected links to about 117 articles containing the phrase "national conversation".
~I heard a politician use this phrase on tv today and wondered how many conversations I had that in some way mirrored a journalist's idea of a "national conversation".
Bush's Worst Lies of 2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16326716/site/newsweek/
[photo via google: bush portrait\ not Newsweek]
Military Considers Recruiting Foreigners
The armed forces... struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks - including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer..
...since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of immigrants in uniform who have become US citizens has increased from 750 in 2001 to almost 4,600 last year, according to military statistics.
story | Boston Globe via TruthOut
~Maybe the Pentagon and the Department of Immigration & Customs should set up a shuttle service. Instead of sending illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin, direct the ones who may qualify to selected military installations/recruitment centres for a few days (or for as long as it takes) of lectures and workshops promoting the benefits of US military enlistment?
Maybe the Pentagon can hire foreign 'head-hunters' and pay a bounty for each recruit.
Maybe the Pentagon should pay a 'finders fee' to America's teachers, religious leaders, coaches, social workers, police officers, judges, private 'career consulting' firms' or anyone that convinces a young person to enlist.
[photo not from above]
Immortality Systems
Once we get off the finite surface of the planet earth and are capable of living in potentially infinite orbital space, there is no reason to have a finite lifespan.
As engineers of our own body chemistry we can disable the genes that dictate the termination of our lifespan, as scientists have already demonstrated with plants and animals. There is no inherent limit to the "Lebensraum" (living space) in orbital space as there is on our planetary surface.
The life span of each organism is determined by the environment to which it has adapted.
The new environment will be our imagination which we can only fill if we live forever. We have to be immortal. There is no inherent limit to our imagination as long as there is time and space.
The incentive to be a member in good standing in society is the pursuit of immortality...*
>for example from the Forum:
Name: Ivybelle
email:
Message: Flesh is frail. On earth the body dies before the human mind and spirit can reach the heights of experience and wisdom to accomplish something truly remarkable. As a result, we see around us juvenile people, childish nations, selfish concepts and a general lack of vision and benevolence. If we could extend the human lifespan by just a matter of decades without being curbed by the weak, ageing body, complicated by a toxic cocktail of degenerative hormones and enzymes, make fuller use of the dormant side of our brains, think what we can achieve for the good of not just all mankind but all sentient beings throughout our vast cosmos. Only then can we understand what life is all about and see what lies beyond the tips of our noses - and grow up, mature as the human being must surely be meant to. Then we can see how meaningless material wealth and struggle for power all are. We can live as long as we choose to, love forever if we wish to, and control our own destinities. That would be a giant leap in human evolution. That day must come - perhaps sooner than later. When it does, I hope I will be there - with the pioneer immortals... to help shape a new era in the great cosmos!! I am prepared to shoulder all the responsibility that such a privilege entails - the privilege of being able to grow in human consciousness.
*http://www.immortalitysystems.com/
~What do we want! Immortality!
When do we want it?! Now!
Forget the gift of life, the care of the earth-bound, this man is promising immortality.
People pray for the weirdest things. God must be infinitely patient.
December 25, 2006
FBI Chided for OKC Bomb Investigation
A two-year congressional inquiry into the Oklahoma City bombing concludes that the FBI didn't fully investigate whether other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the deadly 1995 attack, allowing questions to linger...
The report says the inadequacy of the bureau's work was exposed two years ago when some bombing evidence overlooked for 10 years was discovered in a home linked to Nichols that had been searched repeatedly by agents.
"The Oklahoma City bombing case was the largest case the FBI worked on before 9/11," (FBI spokesman Richard) Kolko said. "Agents at virtually every office, domestically and overseas, covered thousands of leads. Every bit of information was investigated and reviewed."
~If amateurs like McVeigh and Nichols with their own money were able to build a bomb as large as this one, wouldn't idiots--forget terrorists--all over America be blowing up stuff for fun? (In the years before 1995.) Deserted farms, mines, forests, ponds, garbage dumps, quarries, junked machinery, etc. The anomalous seismic activity from these explosions by 'hobbiests' must have driven the earthquake experts crazy.
[photos google: okc bombing\ not AP story above]
YouTube Helps Police Find Suspect
Police in the Southern Ontario city of Hamilton said...that they uploaded a one-minute, 12-second clip from a surveillance tape onto the video-sharing YouTube site. The video, which showed suspects arriving at a local nightclub for a Sean Price hip-hop concert... was viewed more than 30,000 times
"This is the first time Hamilton police have utilized video web posting in an investigation, and to the best of its knowledge, the first time that law enforcement has ever used it as a direct investigative tool," Staff Sgt. Jorge Lasso told a news conference.
entry | World Downloads
~Contrary to the above article, the video has been removed by the user.
The article doesn't say how long the video ran. Or how many hits it received before local tv news(?) reported on it. I'm guessing the Hamilton police had mainstream news media help getting their YouTube video seen.
How about planting jumbotrons near freeways, in shopping malls and major retail stores connected to police departments on which images of wanted criminals, missing children, suspects and other law enforcement concerns are broadcasted continuously?
[photo google: jumbotron\ not from above or YouTube]
The Oxford Picture Dictionary Interactive CD-ROM
http://movies.katz.ws/download/882789/Movie/The%20Oxford%20Picture%20Dictionary%20Interactive%20CD-R/ (register to download rar)
thanks Diederik
Armadillos Marching North to Illinois
"We've had armadillos killed on the road just about every year" since 2003, says (the Jackson County animal-control chief Lloyd) Nelson, reflecting what wildlife specialists say is ample evidence that the creatures with the pencil-thin tail are nudging their way northward from their southern U.S. climes.
"We've got them in Nebraska; that's as far north as we have any records," said Lynn Robbins, a biology professor at Missouri State University. "They're adapting, filling in so many places."
~Can armadilllos march? From films I've seen I'ld say they waddle, scuttle, or scurry and are incapable of marching.
They're probably quicker then they look.
December 24, 2006
Arlington Wreath Project/Wreaths Across America
U.S. Marines with 1st Marine Logistics Group (Forward) bow their heads in silence in honor of fallen comrades during an evening vigil at Camp Al Taqaddum, Iraq, on Dec. 14, 2006. The holiday wreaths are a donation from the Worcester Wreath Company as part of an expansion of the 15-year old tradition known as the Arlington Wreath Project, in which thousands of holiday wreaths are brought to Arlington Cemetery in Arlington, Va., to adorn headstones. The vigil is being timed to coincide with a similar ceremony being held in Arlington National Cemetery. DoD photo
U.S. Navy sailors and family members prepare to lay wreaths on tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., on Dec. 14, 2006, as part of Wreaths Across America. The annual event honors veterans by placing memorial wreaths at state and national cemeteries and veteranís monuments across the country. DoD photo
~"So this is Christmas...And what have you done...Another year over..."@
>Google News this month (11/24-12/24) collected 227 stories containing the phrase "wreaths across America" while during the same period of time some 3,310 news articles were printed (in the USA) using the words simpson book
I never heard about "Wreaths Across America" until today.
Wizened Baby
Holly Madison & Hugh Hefner
~Wrinkles and shine; leather and polish.
Imagine hospital geriatric wards, homes for the elderly and hospices requiring a few of their personnel to doll themselves up everyday like Ms. Madison. Female (and buff male) health professionals willing to maintain themselves and take on a daily fashion regime could be AMA certified as special glamour providers for the sick and elderly.
Glamour is wasted on those who can afford it. Wouldn't you like to see sexy/glamorous people---not like Paris & Nicole---permanently in places among people, they're seldom seen?
Bush Using "Shadow Budget" to Fund His Iraq War
Since the conflict began in 2003, Bush has used emergency spending bills to cover nearly all of the costs for the Iraq operation, rather than including them in the annual budget.
He has come under criticism for this practice, not only by lawmakers but also by the Iraq Study Group that recommended policy options for Iraq and said that in the interests of openness, the budget process should not be circumvented.
Three lawmakers - one Republican and two Democrats - wrote to Bush on Thursday telling him that the emergency bills had created an "ever- expanding shadow budget" that was obscuring Congress's oversight process and skewing budget deficit projections.
...legislation passed in June to authorize the latest infusion of funds for Iraq, an amendment was added requiring the president to finance the war costs through the annual budget.
But Bush indicated in a signing statement that he does not necessarily view that requirement as binding because it is the president's role to submit the budget.
story | Reuters via/archived TruthOut
~Without Congressional oversight fewer thieves get more misappropriated money? With Congressional approval more thieves must share that tax-funded booty, i.e. Iraq War defense contracts?
There must be (a few) thousand(s) of Americans who absolutely adore President Bush and his War.
[photo not with above]
NOWs 2007 Calendar
Love Your Body All Year with NOW's 2007 Calendar
*"...a popular NOW Foundation project that raises awareness about women's health, body image, self-esteem, cosmetic surgery and the role of advertising in each of those issues. This empowering and striking calendar features original artwork from the Love Your Body poster contest, interesting health facts and inspiring ideas for creating change in the world."
http://www.now.org/nnt/fall-2006/calendar.html
~*Parthenogensis? (Doggy-style?)
The Glogger Community
>i.e. a wearable-computer community/a computer wearing community..bringing personal imaging to the masses
"What is Glogging?
A CyborgLog (often abbreviated to 'glog) is a first-person recording of an activity, in which the person doing the recording is a participant in the activity.
What is Glogger?
An absolutely free web service and free program that allows people to easily broadcast live content from their camera phones or manually from their digital camera, to any of their social networking sites, blogs, or personal pages
How is this different from a blog?
You automatically broadcast the images to multiple sites for all to see. You always have a visual record of what happened to you, as long as you wear your glogging device. It's mobile, goes with you."
home: http://glogger.eyetap.org/
~Aren't there laws protecting those of us who don't want our likenesses broadcasted by others and recorded in their personal imaging files? Or has 9/11 and the corporate community's need for video security cameras squelched their enforcement?
Adolescents Downloading Children
Adolescents convicted of possession of abuse images of children: A new type of adolescent sex offender?
Abstract:
Seven young people have been referred to the Taith Service for downloading offences over a 3-year period. The extent to which young “downloaders” may be similar or different to adults convicted of similar offences is considered. The sample group is also compared to a larger group of young people who have engaged in contact sexual offences across static and dynamic factors. The differences between these two sample groups and the potential implications thereof are discussed.
Moultrie, Denise
Source: Journal of Sexual Aggression, Volume 12, Number 2, July 2006, pp. 165-174
via http://www.growingupsexually.tk (Topica)
Deconstructing Primatology?
Donna Haraway's Primate Visions concerns how and why stories about human nature are made and told in modern American scientific primatology...Since anyone can invent a story, gaining authority for a particular one relies on establishing the greatest credibility possible by "grounding" it well. "Human nature" stories have special importance because they authorize much Euro-American cultural and political practice, and the nonhuman primates are a potent resource for grounding them: they provide a telling mirror on humanity because they seem to be at the boundary between human and animal. Among the major authors of these stories are the life sciences, who claim a form of grounding of credibility in objectivity. Scientific stories are said to derive from the "real" workings of nature and the special working of science.
It is precisely this that Haraway's study opposes, arguing that what grounds these scientific stories is less "objective" than their authors suggest. Stories are motivated, created, transformed, and believed because of a wider set of factors than those officially acknowledged..."
article http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/srb/primatology.html
[photo via Yahoo-News\ not above]
The Oyster Loaf
inside 1 2 3 4 back
more menus from The Alice Statler Menu Collection: http://www.ccsf.edu/Library/alice/menucollection.html
Cereality: Cereal Bar & Cafe
*
"I saw that your employees wear pajamas, so I told them that's how we would be dressed. I told them to get ready, we were going out for a surprise. The whole drive in, they tried to guess where we were headed. They couldn't guess, and I wouldn't tell them. Then, when they saw the store, they just about flipped. "WHAT?!?!?!? We can have cereal mixed with toppings???? Just like an ice cream sundae????"
They both went back for seconds.."
---Dan Citrenbaum, Philadelphia, PA
"I visited your Chicago location for the first time today. I have been stressed out, and a friend suggested we go to get some comfort food. After having some of my favorite childhood cereal and watching Schoolhouse Rock on TV, I walked out feeling much better. We plan on going back once a week until we try every combination!"
--Carole, Chicago, IL
from "The Experience"--Testimonials
>founders http://www.cereality.com/comp_found.php
main: *http://www.cereality.com/main.php
~I don't know why this place of business makes me want to hurt myself. Too cute, too many empty calories? The concept works for coffee.
Aren't there laws protecting our inner children from exploitation like this?
There are no cereal bars & cafes in Minneapolis or Battle Creek?
December 23, 2006
US Air Force in Cyberspace
The United States Air Force has been in continuous combat for 15 years...
"In cyberspace, the US faces potential adversaries capable of penetrating vital telecommunications and information networks and diminishing our capability in the real battlespace.
In response, the Air Force has developed a cyberspace task force to lead airmen on the digital battlefield. The task force will afford new offensive capabilities and new target sets and will be at the vanguard of defending the nation against an electronic Pearl Harbor.
AFA believes it is crucial for the US to defend itself against cyber-attack. The response to an attack on our national information infrastructure must be swift and sure, just as it would be if we were subjected to a traditional physical attack. Protecting military, government, and commercial networks will require increased cooperation between the private sector, DOD, and other government agencies.
from Investing Now in Airpower for Tomorrow The Air Force Association’s 2007 Statement of Policy adopted by AFA’s National Convention on Sept. 24, 2006 in Washington, D.C.
http://www.afa.org/magazine/dec2006/1206investing.asp
>related from Counter-Disappearance, 'Stealth Democracy, ' Picnolepsy
"As Bishop and Phillips have suggested some years ago... in their “Unmanning the Homeland” article, hyperspace or becoming-virtual (in the electronic sense) is not an escape option, a point that picks up from Virilio’s thesis that modern technology is only the _expression of the militarization of the world. Today, the US military complex has officially made that virtual space a battlefield, the creation of the 8th Air Force as a combat prepared squadron in cyberspace being a testimony to that. ... Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, who leads the 8th Air Force has said of cyberspace, “we’re going to treat it as a warfighting domain.” Or as Lani Kass, director of Air Force Cyberspace Task Force, has said, about a month before the inauguration of the 8th Air Force, cyberspace is “a domain just like air, space, land and sea. It’s a domain in and through which we deliver effects – fly and fight, attack and defend – and conduct operations to obtain our national interests.” ... “What I see in the future is cross-domain [from real to virtual space] integration, to deliver effects, like we deliver in air and space, where the commander has at his disposal, truly sovereign options, as stated in our mission, which is the ability to do whatever we want, wherever we want, and however we want – kinetically or nonkinetically and at the speed of sound and at the speed of light” (my emphases). In short, cyberspace is certainly a no-disappearance zone. -
complete Underfire message http://underfire.eyebeam.org/pipermail/underfire/2006-November/003409.html by Irving Goh
[photo not with above links]
Tate Britain: Your Collection
Tate Britain displays British art from 1500 to today. Yes, it's a museum, but it's also like a big living room. All those works of art are yours.
Tate has devised a new way of looking at the Displays with a range of themed 'Collections'. These suggest a number of personal journeys you could take, reflecting different moods and enthusiasms and revealing the extraordinary breadth of work on show.
Here you can experience some Collections that have already been curated from the artworks currently on show at Tate Britain - have a look at these and then why not create your own Collection?
You can create your Collection, print it as a leaflet, or send it to a friend. Ready to have a go?
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/yourcollection/
Red & Green
~Shouldn't the reds and greens of Christmas decorations and advertising 'mean' (or symbolize) something? Or like Christmas songs and melodies they now function more as the 'meaning of Christmas' then as signs or ways to inform us what Christmas means?
Etsy: Your Place to Buy and Sell All Things Handmade
~If Andy Warhol was right and heaven is a department store then this must be the Garden of Eden?
John Labovitz's E-Zine-List
by Keyword
This is a list of electronic 'zines around the world, accessible via the Web, FTP, email, and other services
Top 200 Keywords http://www.e-zine-list.com/titles_by_keyword/index.shtml
~E-zines not fan-zines.
December 22, 2006
Lyrics: Happy Christmas (War Is Over)
War is over
If you want it
War is over
No-oo-www
So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over, a new one begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones, the old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy new year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
more Happy Christmas lyrics by John Lennon
@~I've been hearing Sarah McLachlan's version of this song alot in the last two weeks. Doesn't its sentiment complement the following railgun entry... like salt on popcorn? If you want it?
How many Sarah McLachlan Christmas cds would $250 million buy?
Railgun
A railgun is a form of gun that converts electrical energy (rather than the more conventional chemical energy from an explosive propellant) into projectile kinetic energy.
wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gun
link to Power Labs Railgun 2.0 (Amateur) Research 2003
http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun2.htm
"...the technology for using electromagnetic energy pulses to accelerate materials to extremely high speeds is only now sufficientlyadvanced that it is being exploited to evaluate the survivability of spacestructures and the survivability and lethality of military weapons systems. In fact, electromagnetic launchers are now capable of accelerating objects to such high speeds that projectiles are able to travel manyhundreds of kilometers or penetrate the most advanced modern armors,and electromagnetic launchers have even reached sufficiently highspeeds to put objects in orbit around the earth.
from The Electromagnetic Launch Technology Revolution
by Harry Fair | Magnetic Magazine 2003 (Google cache)
New Navy gun has zip
Dahlgren center tests weapon lacking gunpowder, warhead
Dahlgren Naval Surface Warfare Center is testing a satellite-guided weapon that could give the Navy's future ships a gun that doesn't need gunpowder, can reach targets 200 to 250 miles away at hypersonic speeds and vaporize them without an explosive warhead.
And the electromagnetic railgun should be able to fire that shot on the equivalent of 3 gallons of ship's fuel.
The projectile "is leaving the muzzle at 2.5 kilometers per second -- Mach 7," or about 5,300 mph, (Charles Garnett, the railgun's project manager at Dahlgren, in King George County) ...said. "In about 20 seconds, you're pretty much out of the sensible atmosphere."
When the high-energy railgun's projectile sizzles back into the Earth's atmosphere from its short flight in space, it's still screaming along at about 3,800 mph.
"At the speed you're traveling, it's not required that you have explosives," Garnett said. "Just the kinetic energy is enough to do damage."
Railguns are stunningly simple in concept, though difficult to make work in practice. The forces are tremendous," said (Virginia Tech U) electrical engineering professor Hadis Morkoc.
We know we can shoot the gun at the powers we're talking about," Garnett said. "What you need to be able to do is shoot the gun over and over again," say, 2,000 or 3,000 times.
The Navy will spend about $50 million for railgun development at Dahlgren as part of its five-year, $230 million national program to bring the weapons system on line, officials said.
The Navy hopes to have an operational railgun at sea on its warships by 2025. ..."There are significant science and technology risks that have to be reduced,"
...today, the U.S. Navy's standard 5-inch ship's gun has a range of only about 15 miles.
But in eight hours of fighting, said David Allen Adams, writing in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, one naval railgun could deliver three times the destructive energy on 10 times as many targets as an aircraft carrier's entire wing of F/A-18 Hornet jets.
"It's a significant advance over existing gun systems," Garnett said.
from Dec. 7, 2006 press release BY PETER BACQUE
(Richmond) TIMES-DISPATCH
~"...the launcher does make a satisfyingly loud bang when it fires. "It sounds like a cannon," (Garnett) said.
Internet Folklore?
>Diederik asks:
"I was wondering whether you encountered an institute, or silly person, who archives the wonderful parapractical phenomena of this fantastic medium. For instance, when there is a 404, sometimes admins upload special pages saying, for instance, "nothing here", and endless variantions such as "fuck off, it's gone" and "don't leech, its not nice". I mean this is culture, right? There ARE people who "rescue" the little amiga and atari games, so where are the internet folklorists? When in 2055 we look back on those crazy early years, who will be able to show our kids what a hang up used to say? E.g. "to complete installation you need to reboot"--this will die out sooner or later. Even now we have problems remembering (my dad owned an amiga 500 which was pretty cool, and it had the most dramatic hangup screen: a flashing red message against a black background...ah! nostalgia. Nowadays I simply miss auditory hangups, hangups in which the sound goes ng!kta ng!kta ng!kta ng!kta or r!r!r!r!r!r!r!)" -- D."
~I (Stubbornson) was sure such an archive would be found here http://www.coudal.com/archive.php?cat=cat_moom but I quickly got overwhelmed and grabbed the obvious http://www.computerhistory.org/research/photo_film.shtml with no results.
D. came back with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_404 and 404 Research Lab: http://www.plinko.net/404/
FAMSF: My Gallery
Build your own virtual exhibitions from over 82,000 digitized works of art from the collections of the de Young and the Legion of Honor. (i.e. the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) My Gallery allows you to become your own virtual curator!
Overview
With My Gallery, registered users can search the FAMSF ImageBase, choose works of art, and build an unlimited number online galleries. Galleries may be either shared with the public or kept private.
Galleries can be re-accessed at any time and can be edited and changed.
for example "theme galleries" http://search2.famsf.org:8080/mygallery/user_galleries.shtml?category=Themes
all public My Galleries: http://www.thinker.org/gallery/index.asp
instructions:http://www.thinker.org/fam/about/imagebase/subpage.asp?subpagekey=651
Download 1000 Photoshop Tricks
http://rapidshare.de/files/28164001/Worth.1000.photoshop.tricks.rar
>related: "How to Extract rar. Fiiles"
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/zip/how-to-create-and-extractrar-files-221066.php (see comments)
>perhaps http://www.7-zip.org/
thanks Diederik
~Free is good.
Blog: Overheard Starbuck
http://overheardstarbuck.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_overheardstarbuck_archive.html
December 21, 2006
Google Image Search: soldier christmas
Whitehouse 1995: G.H. Bush Library
2006
miniature
DefenseLink 2003
Blog: Youyoume
http://www.blogcn.com/u3/51/35/uknowyouyoume/index.html
~There's a graphic freedom, a two dimensional creative facility and acumen I'll never understand; I'll never experience by my own hand. Youyoume reminds me of what a tiny spot I've made my own.
Bush "Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons" for Offensive Use
In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.
So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002.
The Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing "first-use" strike of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) in war, says Boyle..
For fiscal years 2001-2004, the federal government funded $14.5 billion "for ostensibly 'civilian' biowarfare-related work alone,"
more: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122006R.shtml
~I wonder if any of these programs explain some of the recent outbreaks inside the USA and around the world of West Nile Virus, Bird Flu, Mad Cow disease, and North America's BSE/CWD afflicted deer and elk populations?
If pathogens have 'escaped' from the Pentagon's bioweapons labs would there be more human casualties?
Art: Photographing Identity
Agujeros Negros / Black Holes from El Libro Oscuro
1995; Gelatin silver print; 18 X 14 1/2 in.
Juan Carlos Alom's gallery
more photographers/photos
http://www.photoarts.com/gallery/photographing-identity/
from Consumptive
December 20, 2006
Theater of the Absurd at TSA
In late October, Christopher Soghoian*, a Ph.D. student in the School of Informatics at Indiana University, found his attention wandering during a lecture in his Cryptographic Protocols class. While sitting in class, he created a Web site he called “Chris’s Northwest Airlines Boarding Pass Generator.”
A visitor to the site could plug in any name, and Mr. Soghoian’s software would create a page suitable for printing with a facsimile of a boarding pass, identical in appearance to one a passenger who had bought a Northwest Airlines ticket would generate when using the airline’s at-home check-in option.
The fake pass could not be used to actually board a plane — boarding passes are checked at the gate against the roster of ticket buyers in the airline’s database — but it could come in handy for several other purposes, Mr. Soghoian suggested, such as passing through airport security so you could meet your elderly grandparents at the gate.
Or, as he told his site’s visitors, it could “demonstrate that the T.S.A. Boarding Pass/ID check is useless.” It worked well, indeed.
No cryptographic recipe was cracked; no airline computer system was compromised. Without visiting an airport, Mr. Soghoian needed access to nothing other than a public Web site to embarrass those responsible for airport security.
To thank Mr. Soghoian for helping the government identify security weaknesses, the T.S.A. sent him a letter warning of possible felony criminal charges and fines, and ordered him to cease operations, which he promptly did. It was too late, however, to spare his apartment from an F.B.I. raid.
Richard L. Adams, the T.S.A.’s acting federal security director, said Mr. Soghoian’s generator “could pose a threat to aviation security.”
But Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at BT Counterpane, a security consulting firm in Mountain View, Calif., emphatically disagreed. Anybody with Photoshop could create a fake boarding pass, he said. Mr. Soghoian’s Web site simply eliminated the need to use Photoshop. The T.S.A.’s profession of outrage is nothing but “security theater,”.."
story by Randall Strouss | NYTimes [signin: unknown/unknown]
via http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/
*Christopher Soghoian's blog http://slightparanoia.blogspot.com/
Baby is Sent Through X-Ray Machine at LAX
A woman places her month-old grandson in a bin for carry-on items. Doctors later determine he did not get a dangerous dose of radiation.
"--bizarre but not unprecedented--"
story | LATimes
thanks Conscientious
~Did they give the kid a free tee-shirt? "I Went Through the X-Ray Machine at LAX and All I Got Was An Extra Day's Dose of Radiation and This Lousy T-Shirt."
Merry Christmas
Special Collection Pullen Library Georgia State University
~The holidays haven't started and I'm already purging. It seems like this year I skipped the bingeing altogether.
Merry Christmas
~Marine mammal entertainers; Hakkejima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, Japan. via Yahoo News-Photos
Art: Santa's Ghetto
Banksy said: “I felt the spirit of Christmas was being lost. It was becoming increasingly uncommercialised and more to do with religion, so we decided to open our own shop and sell pointless stuff.”
Open for 23 days, the (Oxford Street, London) basement ghetto is billed as a “squat art concept store” and houses works by 20 underground artists.
58 Flickr photos of Santa's Ghetto 2006 London
http://flickr.com/photos/liferfe/sets/72157594414905377/
thanks Priapo
December 19, 2006
Sandia's Super Sensor System
Sandia National Laboratories have developed an integrated detection system that promises to make it easier to monitor, identify and catch perpetrators trying to infiltrate prohibited areas.
The research team, headed by project investigator Hung Nguyen, set out to discover how small, low-cost, low-power, commercially available sensors can supplement their in-house customised sensors. During that time, numerous projects - Target Acquisition, Location, Observation, and Neutralisation (TALON), Hard and Deeply Buried Target Grand Challenge (HDBT), Sensor Dart, and Virtual Perimeter System (VPS) - contributed to the advancement of unattended ground sensor (UGS) technology.
As a result, Sandia has created a sensor system complete with onboard GPS, compass, local and long haul radios, digital signal processor, and video capabilities.
‘We wanted inexpensive sensors to act as a first line of defence identifying potential targets and then through a series of radio signals wake up the UGS package. The Sandia-developed UGS package could then use advanced pattern-recognition techniques to classify four-legged animals, two-legged humans, or civilian and military vehicles,’ says Nguyen. ‘The significance of this is that by combining commercial sensors with our UGS, we can cover more ground for less.’
The integration of the more powerful sensor and the smaller ones will increase detection range, lower false alarms, and increase the area of coverage without increasing cost in complex terrains.
The commercial sensors, provided by Crossbow Technology, were modified with Sandia algorithms and some minor hardware changes. They can be powered by either a battery or solar panel, depending on customer needs. The sensor uses a geophone equipped with a 10cm pointed spike planted in the ground to detect movement by measuring seismic waves. Any events detected are reported back to the UGS via a self-configuring and self-healing seamless network.
press release | The Engineer Online
~"Hard and Deeply Buried Target Grand Challenge (HDBT)"-- is that what the kids are calling it these days?
>related from Crossbow Tech. How Wireless Sensors Work
>Crossbow Tech. Wireless Sensor Network Development Kits:
http://www.xbow.com/Products/productdetails.aspx?sid=160
(Their out of the box starter kit retails for $995.)
[geophone from KGS\ not Sandia or Crossbow]
Tucson's Cocaine Traffiking Military Recruiters
(Tucson Military Recruiters Ran Cocaine)
Some kept visiting schools for 3 years after FBI caught them on tape.
...these dozen or so recruiters formed the nucleus of one of the FBI's biggest public corruption cases, the sting known as Operation Lively Green...
Some were still recruiting three years after they first were caught on camera running drugs in uniform. Most have pleaded guilty and are to be sentenced in March. Some honorably retired from the military.
Military recruiting officials say the corruption was not widespread...
At a press conference to unveil the case last year, the FBI announced that many Lively Green defendants were military members. Agents didn't say that recruiters were involved.
Legal expert Stephen Saltzburg, who teaches criminal procedure at George Washington University, said it's entirely possible that the Tucson recruiters were running drugs in their free time and still functioning normally on the job.
(FBI Special Agent Adam) Radtke said the sting got started in late 2001, when the FBI received numerous complaints that (Darius W.)Perry, who worked out of the (Army National) Guard's East Side recruiting office, was taking bribes to fix the military aptitude test scores of new recruits.
The FBI put an undercover informant in place to check it out. As the FBI plant was paying Perry to fix a test score in the parking lot of a Tucson restaurant, Perry opened the trunk of his recruiting vehicle and offered to sell part of a kilo of cocaine, Radtke said.
"Perry basically introduced the crime to us," the agent testified.
The sting was set up so participants could make money in two ways - by agreeing to help transport cocaine and by finding others to do so.
If recruiters used data from recruiting rolls to solicit people for drug running, that's particularly offensive, said military law expert Scott Silliman, a former senior lawyer for the Air Force who now is a law professor at Duke University..
How much prison time they get - if any - also may be influenced by the allegations of misconduct that have surfaced in the Lively Green probe.
...there was an incident in October 2002 in which informants posing as drug dealers hired hookers after a drug run to a Las Vegas hotel.
The FBI informant paid the prostitutes to have sex with several men who later became defendants, witnesses said.
At one point, they said, a prostitute who was drunk and high appeared to pass out and one of the FBI informants performed lewd acts over the woman's face while someone else took photographs.
The informant involved later destroyed the photos, said the defense lawyer...
story By Carol Ann Alaimo | Arizona Daily Star via TruthOut
~The few the proud the bribe-able. "Of the more than 60 Lively Green defendants who have pleaded guilty fo far. 10 were Tuscon military recuiters Between the 10, they pocketed a total of $180,600 in bribe payments, court records show."
The story doesn't say how many recruiters were involved in taking bribes to fix the military aptitude test scores of new recruits, or how much they may have earned nor how long those crimes were allowed to continue.
Their test-score fixing business was chump-change compared to the FBI's cocaine dealing by a factor of ten? A hundred?
How much does the FBI usually spend during a sting per arrested individual? "... a U.S. Customs and Border Protection port inspector, agreed to wave through two vehicles he believed were loaded with cocaine at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales, in exchange for $19,000."
Of course all that bribe money and then some(?) is confiscated by he FBI, but wouldn't it be interesting to learn what are the going rates for certain crimes? And what crimes have the FBI paid people to allegedly commit, to conspire to commit?
What's the cheapest murder, top-secret document, warehouse, kiddie porn production, illegal gun/drug/endangered-animal dealer, human trafficer, missile, kidnapping, communist cell, rape(?) did FBI's stings ever buy? What are the most expensive crimes they've pretended to finance?
large
[illus. from May '05 FreeRepublic not above / no photos of military recruiters]
December 18, 2006
Teeveehead
from http://www.melancholyrhino.com/photo%20index/enigmas2_index.html
Movie Review: The Holiday
(The movie's director Nancy) "Meyers seems to understand that male porn consists either of people having actual sex on screen or substituting explosions and fights for orgasms and that porn for a certain kind of woman takes the form of romance mixed with consumer fantasy."
more:
http://chancelucky.blogspot.com/2006/12/holiday-movie-review.html
December 17, 2006
Study Takes Rare Look at How Materialism Develops in the Young
"Materialism has long been of interest to consumer researchers, but research has centered on adult consumers, not children or teens," says Lan Nguyen Chaplin, a professor of marketing in the U. of I. College of Business.
To get a better handle on the issue, Chaplin and co-investigator Deborah Roedder John, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota, looked at three age groups – 8-9 year olds (third- and fourth-graders), 12-13 year olds (seventh- and eighth-graders) and 16-18 year olds (11th- and 12th-graders).
~"As soon as your born they make you feel small..."
Neuroscience: Localizing Vocal Emotions
Jane E. Warren, Disa A. Sauter, Frank Eisner, Jade Wiland, M. Alexander Dresner, Richard J. S. Wise, Stuart Rosen, and Sophie K. Scott
The sound of laughter or cheering typically makes us smile or laugh. Warren et al. wanted to know how this happens. A facial expression showing an emotion can produce a so-called "mirror" response or similar facial expression in an observer. The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine whether similar mirror responses were also triggered by vocal expressions of emotion. Study participants were asked to listen to human voices conveying positive valence such as amusement and triumph. Listening to these "positive-valence" vocalizations activated specific premotor areas in the left posterior inferior frontal region, an area involved in control of facial movement. The activation was not attributable to facial movement per se. Thus, listening to vocal expressions of emotions appears to automatically engage preparation for orofacial gestures corresponding to the emotional content of the stimulus.
New Dyslexia Theory Blames "Noise"
Poor filtering of unwanted data may be the root cause of common disorder
The studies contradict an influential, 30-year-old theory that blamed dyslexia on a neural deficit in processing the fast sounds of language.
Confusion about dyslexia rivals the confusion of dyslexia. Many still think that to have dyslexia means to mix up your letters (one of many possible symptoms having to do with word recognition, directional ability and decoding of symbols).
What is known is that dyslexia affects millions of children, with estimates of its incidence ranging from 5 to 15 percent.
... new findings point to a deeper problem - not just a visual deficit - affecting all areas of perception. ...people with dyslexia appear to have shaky mental categories for the essential sounds that make up language.
The new study in Psychological Science builds on...results published by the team of Sperling, Lu, Manis and Seidenberg last year in Nature Neuroscience.
Free Expression and a Satisfied Society:
What Child Pornography Laws Really Protect
Abstract
Motion pictures portray childhood sexuality by pushing the elusive and controversial line between free expression and exploitation. While child pornography laws protect real children as subjects in overtly sexually exploitative motion pictures (kiddy porn), in practice, due to issues of interpretation, application, and accessibility, free expression in mainstream motion pictures is supported more fully than child protection. Recent Supreme and Circuit Court decisions allow the motion picture industry to more freely portray childhood sexuality without fear of expression becoming illegal. Thus, as our social history illustrates, the societal awareness of the sexuality of children is all the more satisfied. Legally through what it consumes and where it places its implicit and explicit interests, society supports the sexualization of children. Concomitantly, filmmakers respond with motion pictures that feed society’s desires and push, if not exceed, the bounds of legitimate free expression. The perverse and unintended consequence is that crimes against children continue because child protection efforts forever languish in this history.
link to working paper:
http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8915&context=expresso by James E. Bristol
by way of http://www.growingupsexually.tk/
[photo from @/ not with above]
Fall Detecting Sensor Increases Safety, Pranks on Job Sites
...a new wearable sensor that'll let bosses keep tabs on employees... able to detect when someone has fallen down and even withstand explosions (just the sensor, not the person). It works simply by watching for when a person hasn't moved for a preset period of time, ringing an alarm when it detects immobility to notify others...
press release | Endgadget
New Photographers 2007
re the imagery industry
more images from Ricardo Barcellos
links to 30+ other New Photographers:
http://corporate.gettyimages.com/marketing/np/2007/usa/index.asp?n=about&page=about
December 16, 2006
FAA Issues 1st-Ever Space Tourism Rules
For now, the flights aren't required to be safe for passengers. Lawmakers were concerned that safety requirements would hamper innovation in the infant industry, and settled on informed consent for the early years of paid space travel. The FAA was given the authority to begin regulating for passenger safety in eight years, or if an accident causing serious injury or death happened before then.
"Private human space flight will be an unparalleled adventure," said FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey. "In an environment where some level of risk will always be present, this action underscores the FAA's firm commitment to public safety."
~Can you think of a more spectacular way for celebrities and multi-millionaires to die?
Maybe after a dozen or so 'rich and famous' lose their lives in accidents, space tourism will lose some of it's glamour?
[illus not from above]
Smithsonian's TV Deal Irks GAO Investigators
Two filmmakers were refused access to the Smithsonian Institution's collections for their projects but researchers generally have not been restricted so far by the Smithsonian's semi-exclusive deal with...(Showtime, a cable tv network owned by CBS Inc.)
Filmmakers, historians, archivists, librarians and other researchers have criticized the venture for its confidentiality and its potential to limit public access to the Smithsonian's vast public resources.
Commonly referred to as "the nation's attic," the Smithsonian includes 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoo and nine research facilities.
Science Casts Doubt on Arson Convictions
A definitive count isn't possible, but the best estimate of leading fire investigators across the country is that there could be hundreds of mistaken arson prosecutions, all built on the same ideas that were uprooted more than a decade ago.
The new arson science could become the most powerful tool to reveal wrongful convictions since DNA testing began overturning rape and murder cases in 1989. So far, 186 men and one woman have been freed because of the new technology.
Up until the 1990s, this is what fire investigators were taught:
• Fires always burn up, not down.
• Fires that burn very fast are fueled by accelerants; "normal" fires burn slowly.
• Arsons fueled by accelerants burn hotter than "normal" fires.
• The clues to arson are clear. Burn holes on the floor indicate multiple points of origin. Finely cracked glass (called "crazed glass") proves a hotter-than-normal fire. So does the collapse of the springs in bedding or furniture, and the appearance of large blisters on charred wood, known as "alligatoring."
Firefighters and investigators arrived at these conclusions through decades of observation. But those beliefs had never been given close scientific scrutiny, until an effort that began in the 1970s and continued through the 1980s.
"There were a lot of rules of thumb, but very little scientific understanding," said Jonathan Barnett, a professor of fire protection engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a leader in the investigation of the World Trade Center collapse.
Once researchers began to apply the scientific method to beliefs about fire, they fell apart.
A major revelation came from greater understanding of a phenomenon known as "flashover."
When that happens, it can leave any number of signs that investigators earlier thought meant arson — like the burn holes on the floor that used to prove multiple starting points. And it can cause a fire to burn down from the ceiling — not up as investigators had been taught.
Significantly, flashover can create very hot and very fast-moving fires..
story by way of Unknown News
CRS on Reliable Replacement Warhead
In considering the future of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, the government must decide between two basic courses of action, explains a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service: either it must seek to extend the functional lifetime of existing nuclear weapons, or it must develop a new generation of warheads.
Another potential option, abolition of nuclear weapons, is not considered by the CRS, since "it has garnered no support in Congress or the Administration."
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2006/12/crs_on_reliable_replacement_wa.html
~I've been praying for a couple of years now...since I found out that America's nuclear stockpile was deteriorating...that our leaders would simply allow the Pentagon's thousands of radioactive bombs and warheads to become obsolete (and cart them off for burial). No more nuclear bombs, no more new poisons (cancers!) to worry about. No new weapons industry and gov't handouts to fund with our taxes. Shows you how stupid I am.
*>related from April's LA Times (*via Unknown News)
Bush Administration Plans to Build 125 New Nuclear Weapons Every Year
~Those neo-con Bushie bastards!
JASON on Engineering Microorganisms for Energy Production
'Microorganisms are simpler than plants; they have smaller genomes and proteomes, and are easier to manipulate and culture. The enormous biodiversity of microorganisms presents a broad palette of starting points for engineering. Microorganisms already make many metabolic products, some of which are useful fuels."
"Boosting the efficiency of fuel formation from microorganisms is an important research challenge.."
blog entry w/link to 92pp report | Secrecy News
December 15, 2006
Fun with Photoshop Filters
sloppy mandala
~This image started out from a scan of a roll of duct tape. I wanted to see what it would look like as I tried to push the roll at the same rate the scanner's light bar moved. The scanned images never 'flowed' like I thought they should, but they were huge files 2000+pixels vs. the 250 & 500 pixel sized images posted here and surprisingly luminous.
Months later I thought about cropping, resizing and applying my three favorite photoshop filters.
>here's a link to 30+ other sloppy mandala's posted on Spitting Image
Bogus Prostitution Stings
"The dozen men and their lawyers argued in what has become a class-action lawsuit against the (Stone Park Il )police department that prostitution stings forced innocent men to pay exorbitant fines and towing fees.
Lawyers alleged the stings were a "moneymaking scheme" that netted the Cook County community more than $500,000.
NBC 5's Phil Rogers reported the stings occurred at the Blue Dolphin Car Wash on North Mannheim Road.
Car wash owner John Pawlik said he just wants the stings to stop.
"It's practically ruined my business," Pawlik said.
Pawlik said the car wash's security system showed a decoy police officer approaching customers. Many of them insisted they said no, only to get arrested anyway.
This is not an arrest. It's a matter of money. You've got to come up with $500," (Attorney) Horwitz said.
Hundreds of men have been arrested in the undercover stings.
story with link to NBCs video
~CCTV video, a class action lawsuit and broadcast TV reporting---that's what it takes to stop, to address, police corruption?
Chicago Looking Into Electronic Parking System
Paying your parking meter could soon be as easy as dialing a phone number. The system, similar to the technology used with iPass, allows users to pre-pay for parking. A transponder will alert them when they need to refeed the meters. item's url
Micturation Politics: Teacher Told Boys Needing Bathroom Break to Use Bottle
SALISBURY, Md. (AP) - Wicomico County school officials are deciding the fate of a teacher at Salisbury Middle School who instructed three boys who needed a bathroom break to urinate into a soda bottle.
School policy requires eighth-graders to be escorted to the restroom, and the teacher suggested the bottle Friday when an escort was not available.
Interim Superintendent Thomas Field confirmed the boys did urinate in the bottle in the classroom. Field declined to identify the teacher or even identify the teacher's gender or the class being taught. Field says the teacher is not at school today.
Assistant superintendent for Student Services, Allen Brown, says monitoring of bathroom breaks began because the school had been having problems with students defacing the restrooms.
From Diederik who asks:
1. What society, in world history, escorts kids to restrooms?
2. Did they, in fact, use the bottle?
3. What, after all, is wrong with urinating in bottles?"
~(Stubbornson): It happened on a Friday which is some kind of an explanation.
From above I especially liked this phase: "the teacher 'suggested' the bottle..." While words like escorted, confirmed, declined and monitoring call to mind how little of public education is open to personal interpretation, open to suggestion.
Isn't being humiliated over one's bodily functions an intergral part of everyone's educational experience?
[illus. google: pee in bottle/not from above]
Internet Addiction Lawsuit
Companies grapple with Web use and abuse
After 19 years at IBM's East Fishkill plant, (James) Pacenza was fired in May, 2003, after a fellow employee noticed discussion of a sex act on a chat room open on Pacenza's computer. IBM maintains that logging onto the Web site was a violation of its business conduct guidelines and a misuse of company property — and that it was well within its rights to terminate Pacenza's employment.
Pacenza and his attorney beg to differ. They filed suit in a New York U.S. District Court...
story | MSNBC
~Here in America's Heartland some companies are grappling with whether they're required to do criminal background checks on their minimum-wage-earning workers after a Burger King manager was strangled on the job by a paroled multiple-murderer employee.
I'm wondering if the "fellow employee" mentioned above was Mr. Pacenza boss...if his job description required her to report internet misuse..or if IBM routinely awards bonuses and gifts to any employee who saves the company money by narking on others.
December 14, 2006
"Um, My Face Is Up Here"
"With paparazzi tailing pop-culture beauties so closely, there are bound to be a few “wardrobe malfunctions,” but lately it seems every time a celebrity weblog is opened, a link to a picture of their exposed crotch opens too.
...BetUS.com, the most largest and respected sportsbook on the web, posted odds on the next celebrity to have a “crotch shot” make the web."
Jessica Simpson -5/1
Paris Hilton - 3/1
Nicole Hilton - 10/1
Nicole Ritchie - 3/1
Lindsay Lohan - 5/1
Tara Reid - 2/1
Madonna - 20/1
Halle Berry - 50/1
Eva Longoria - 20/1
A Bush Twin - 4/1
Pink - 10/1
Angelina Jolie - 50/1
Janet Jackson - 2/1
Chelsea Clinton - 50/1
http://dontlinkthis.net/archives/2611#comments
[photo from DLT's "Lips!*]
~*With comments like: "Finally! Its not pretty, but I’ve wanted to see this since I was in high school. I can