Spitting Image

Nanotechnology Imaging Sensor Gets Rid of Flash in Cameras

...new nanotechnology-based Single Carrier Modulation Photo Detector (SMPD)... The company (Planet82, the sensor's manufacturer and director of the Nano Scale Quantum Devices Research Center at the Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI) says the sensor is 2,000 times more sensitive to light than traditional photo sensors – it can take picture in near total darkness.

The SMPD image sensor can be mass-produced using standard CMOS process without additional investment for facilities. It is half the size of the current CCD image sensor used in digital cameras and closed circuit television cameras (CCTVs), and CMOS image sensors used in camera phones.

The company expects SMPD image sensor will firstly be available in CCTVs, camera phones and vehicle rear-view sensors.

press release | Nanowerk

~Not putting these new photo sensors into cameras suggests there's a significant loss of quality that camera owners wouldn't tolerate but camera-phone owners wouldn't notice? (I don't know.)

French Customs New Multi-sensor Surveillance Platform

...from Cedip Infrared Systems to equip its 2 new coastguard patrol craft

...the PHAROS LRN is a high-resolution gyrostabilised multi-sensor platform...designed to provide..surveillance imaging in all visibility conditions (day or night). ...a two-axis stabilised platform equipped with a long range 640 x 512 pixels cooled thermal imager to give night capabilities and a colour CCD camera with powerful zoom for daytime operation.
The system supplied to the General Directorate of French Customs will be controlled by two piloting consoles integrated and interfaced with the patrol craft navigation systems. The PHAROS LRN enables detection of small boats at distances of up to 10 nautical miles and automatic tracking of targets spotted by video or detected by ship radars.

press release

Cedip http://www.cedip-infrared.com/security/application_detail.php?id=14

~This press release reminded me that filming something is NOT the same as tracking it. As in: "In contrast to filmic concerns such as transition, montage, and characterization, this militarized language was one of positioning, tracking, identifying, predicting, targeting, and intercepting/containing." (---Source unknown)

World Bank President's Fashion Statement

In this combo picture, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, with holes on his socks, is seen as he leaves from the Ottoman era Selimiye mosque in Edirne, western Turkey, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2007. Wolfowitz was in turkey for a-two-day official visit. (AP Photo/Nadir Alp/Anatolia) | Yahoo

story in Spanish http://www.informativos.telecinco.es/paul_wolfowitz/banco_mundial/tomates_calcetines/turquia_mezquita/dn_40664.htm

~ "I know he not only has money for a pair of new socks but for buying an entire factory but for one second I have imagined a World in which the '06 Nobel Peace Prize winner's, Muhammad Yunus, bank (http://www.grameen-info.org) had changed the way we see those entities that play with our money and had driven World Bank close to bankruptcy.

[It's not strange to see embarrassed foreigners showing their holed socks before entering a mosque in Turkey, one of the few countries that allow kafirs (christians, jews and those who deny Muhammad's prophethood ) to visit muslim temples.]"

Regards. ~ Priapo (priapoATgmail.com AT http://pgp.mit.edu)

(Stubbornson) You might say Priapo's a dreamer...but he's not the only one.

Grand Thieves Auto

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, game of theft, prostitution, drugs, and beautifully animated racist depictions of Cubans and Haitians. You are free-wheeling Tommy Vercetti, driving any car you can pop the lock on, taking hookers out to the lighthouse, enjoying all the pixilated pleasures the 80s can offer you.

Bunk is carjacking the game by putting somebody in the car with you. Their MP3s try to create the illusion of new (subversive) nonplayer characters in the game through the audio. You can choose from one of the many options: an army recruiter to convince you to put your skills to more patriotic uses, a driver instructor, Mama Vercetti, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger.

links: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/003873.php

Germany Issues Arrest Warrants for 13 CIA Agents

"...in the alleged kidnapping of German citizen Khaled al-Masri."

The prosecutor's office refused to reveal the names of the people sought. ..."the personal details contained in the arrest warrants are, according to our current knowledge, aliases of CIA agents." He added that, "further investigation will, among other things, concentrate on trying to determine the clear identities of the suspects." Prosecutors did not state the nationalities of the suspects. However, according to German media reports, most of the suspects are resident in the US.

"The arrest warrants are... a symbol that "the CIA in no way operate in a lawless space and that Germany will not tolerate the measures of the agents and their bosses," Manfred Gnjidic (al-Masri's lawyer) said.

The German prosecutors received the names of the suspects from a Spanish journalist who had sources within Spain's Civil Guard police force...They were also assisted by the Milan prosecutor's office and Swiss senator Dick Marty who led a recent inquiry into CIA renditions for the Council of Europe. Italy has also issued arrest warrants for suspected CIA agents in a separate renditions case.

The German television station NDR released a list of the names of the supects which it claimed its reporters had obtained. The names, which were of 11 men and two women, included the suspected pseudonyms Kirk James Bird and Hector Lorenzo. The station claimed it had contacted three of the suspects but they had refused to comment. They managed to trace one of the men, who has the pseudonym Eric Fain, because he had made a phone call home from Mallorca.

Khaled al-Masri claims he was abducted in Macedonia at the end of 2003. After being handed over to the CIA and flown to Afghanistan, he claims to have been tortured and accused of collusion with the Sept. 11 hijackers. He says he was held for four months before being released without any charges on a roadside in Albania.

story | Spiegel

thanks Conscientious

~We don't do that here. Our tv stations would never investigate or expose CIA pseudonyms.
Have any CIA agents ever been arrested? Ever been tried?
From what I understand governments allow foreign agents to operate inside their countries based on reciprocal agreements.
This news item suggests German security agencies have no need, nor forsee the need, to kidnap American citizens and ship them to other countries for torture.

Does the CIA hold grudges or do they outsource their grudges to private companies?

[photo from google: kidnap/ not Speigel]

~Some news-stories require "artist renditions" (sic) like in the days before photo-journalism, don't you think?

Genetic Sexual Attraction

http://www.geneticsexualattraction.com/index.php

>wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_sexual_attraction

>The Adoption Glossary has no listing for GSA or SA http://glossary.adoption.com/

~Who knew? (Who didn't have an inkling, honestly?)

Don't tell the twins?

[photo not from above]

~I maybe confused by the termininolog, the euphemism.
GSA: no matter how you spell it, it still spells 'incest'?

I Spit on Your Movie Forum

http://www.ispitonyourmovie.com/forum/index.php

~Porno Holocaust?

99% of movies at the cineplex are not worth thinking about or talking about. Maybe these b-movies have some of the movie magic the major films didn't put in their budgets.

Teen Shoots Self at School

SAVANNAH - For the second Wednesday in a row, the words "Code 4" locked down Hardin County High School and had law enforcement scrambling onto the campus here when a 17-year-old student shot himself in a restroom.
The shooting came one week after a man shot and wounded his estranged wife before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide. That incident happened Jan. 17 in the parking lot of a flower shop that is located right across Pickwick Street from the high school.
The 17-year-old junior shot himself in the head with a .25-caliber pistol...

Savannah Police Chief Donald Derr said the incident was captured on a video.
"The situation was picked up on a hall video camera that could see into the public area around the sinks of the restroom," Derr said. "From what we saw, it appears consistent with an attempted suicide."
Derr said there was one other student in the washroom at the time of the incident. "He came from the rear of the restroom, saw what happened and called for help," the chief said.

...airlifted to The Regional Medical Center in Memphis, where he was listed in critical condition Wednesday (Jan. 24). His name is omitted from this article because he is a juvenile.

Within minutes, the Savannah Police and Fire Departments, Hardin County Sheriff's deputies and officers from the Tennessee Highway Patrol and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation descended on the school. As news spread through the county, so did a small army of parents eager to take their children home.
After early confusion, school officials worked out a system to let parents in a few at a time to a front-entrance table where they could check out students. Classes remained in session until the 3 p.m. dismissal, but by 1 p.m., 750 of the school's 1,240 students had left for the day.

(Principal Bobby) McAdams said "I try to be able to read the faces of all of our kids. This was a young man who you'd say was normal. This shocks you, and it leaves you sad."

story

Skydiver Filmed Own Death

Police (in Belguim) have video footage of a fateful jump taken by a parachutist they believe was killed in a "crime of passion".

Els Van Doren, 37, fell 4000 metres to her death last November after her parachute and emergency chute failed to open.

Police believe someone tampered with her parachute and have opened a murder investigation...Fellow skydiver Els Clottemans, 22, was detained for questioning last week and is the "prime suspect" in the investigation..

Her video camera was running as she tried desperately and futilely to open her parachute.

At her funeral, about 1000 people heard her sister deliver a bitter eulogy.
"You did all you could during that final jump to save yourself," she was quoted as saying in the Belgian press. "But someone did not want you to live."

*Police said someone with extensive skydiving expertise had tampered with Van Doren's parachutes.

Clottemans initially escaped attention during a first round of police questioning. She became a suspect in December when she attempted suicide hours before she was to make a second statement to police.

**Clottemans has a history of psychological problems.

story | smh.com.au

~On YouTube?
Is it possible Clottemans' suicide note implicates herself? And police statements above (* and ** for example) reflect that unreported fact?

>update from the Telegraph:

Unlike other jumps, when the four would hold a star formation before splitting up to open their chutes at 4,000 feet, Miss Clootemans hung back when leaving the aircraft.
She then watched from above as her friend Mrs Van Doren, an experienced skydiver with 2,000 jumps under her belt, struggled to open both her main and reserve parachutes.

Police have revealed that Miss Clootemans had previously been arrested for attempting to run over an American boyfriend in a jealous row. He escaped injury and she was released without charge.

story

~So the reason Ms. Clottemans "escaped attention during the first round of questioning" in November(?) was either the police needed to be convinced Mrs. Van Doren's death was a murder and/or they didn't know about the relationship the two women had with "Marcel"?

Are there "police lobbyists" for victims and their relatives?
Who can you call when you think justice isn't being served?

Lyric: He Stopped Loving Her Today

He said I'll love you 'til I die
She told him you'll forget in time
As the years went slowly by
She still preyed upon his mind

He kept her picture on his wall
Went half crazy now and then
He still loved her through it all
Hoping she'd come back again

Kept some letters by his bed
Dated 1992
He had underlined in red
Every single I love you

I went to see him just today
Oh but I didn't see no tears
All dressed up to go away
First time I'd seen him smile in years

(Chorus)
He stopped loving her today
They placed a wreath upon his door
And soon they'll carry him away
He stopped loving her today

(Spoken)
You know she came to see him one last time
Oh and we all wondered if she would
And it kept running through my mind
This time he's over her for good

(Repeat Chorus)

Written by R. V. Braddock and C. Putman, Jr.

~For James.

Photo-caption Non Sequitur

Men on frontiers, whether of time or space, abandon their previous identities. Neighborhood gives identity. Frontiers snatch it away.

[photo: google; caption: Marshall McLuhan @]

Virgin Series: Sarah A. Martin

http://sarahamartin.com/portfolio/virgin_one/

Artist's Statement: http://sarahamartin.com/portfolio/virgin_one/statement.asp

>also:

JC: ... I am curious about how your models - who are models for their own photo series and your old friends - reacted to your work, to you taking photos of them. How did you explain to them what your interest was?

SM:That's a good question. What I love the most about photography is the act of collaboration in portraiture. The people I photograph always have better ideas for picture making than I do. When I was making the portrait diptychs "For My Parents, For My Boyfriend", I asked each girl to pick what she would wear for each portrait, where she wanted the photograph taken, how she would pose, etc. I was clear that one portrait could be used to represent both the parent and boyfriend portrait, however, each girl photographed, chose two separate images. It became interesting for me to see how each girl wanted to present themselves to please each anticipated audience.

>more from A Conversation with Sarah Martin:

http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/archives/002494.html

Homemade Sex Toys

http://www.homemade-sex-toys.com/

[photo not from above link]

Photography: Andy Goldstein

De la serie de fotografías digitales "Arborescencias"

@

Selección de trabajos de Andy Goldstein:
http://www.andygoldstein.org/fotogaleriaEFC/andygoldstein/andy.html

Pinup Art: Gillette A. Elvgren

>for example

Gillette A. Elvgren was born on the 15th March 1914, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He started at the Minnesota Art Institute studying architecture but soon realised that he loved painting more, for this reason he moved to Chicago with his young wife to study at the American Academy of Art. After graduation he found work at Stevens and Gross, a prestigious advertising agency, working under Haddon Sundblom (famous for his Coca Cola Santas).

Elvgren started producing pin-up girls in 1937 for the publishing company Louis F. Dow, however in 1944 he moved to Brown and Bigelow who offered $1000 per pin-up, substantially more than he was getting at Dow. His contract specified between 18 and 20 pin-ups per year, and only for Brown and Bigelow. However Elvgren soon branched out into other forms of commercial art, amongst them adverts for Coca Cola, Ovaltine and others.

link to GAE's gallery: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?prev=Site_index/Pin-up&dir=Site_index/Pin-up/Elvgren_Gil&srow=1

ObscurePhoto.com

>for example

http://www.obscurephoto.com/welcome.htm

~Puppet?

Piercings. rings and studs as knobs, clasps and handles: one's body becomes furniture.

MARCOS VILARIÑO - HISTORIA DUNHA FOTOGRAFÍA DE XOGUETE

Famous Photos in Legos

>for example

~Robert Capa's photograph taken during he Spanish civil war has become the icon to illustrate the hazards of that infamous war. The pic shows the precise moment when Taíno (an anarchist soldier loyal to the republic, his full name is Federico Borrell García) was killed.*

Preto de Cerromuriano ,1936 Robert Capa

more lego photographs http://www.cefvigo.com/galego/galeria_vilari%F1o.htm

~ The webpage, though related to a Spanish gallery, is written in Galician and the book has only been printed in English and Galician. I can understand the author's decision to publish the website in his local language, but I cannot find find a logical reason to avoid a version in Spanish (which is the main and official language in Vigo).

Regards and, btw, happy New Year! ~ *Priapo

The Invisible Enemy in Iraq

Soldiers wounded in Vietnam were six weeks of transit time away from US hospitals, and one out of every four of them died. By contrast, a soldier's odds of surviving battle injuries in Iraq are nine out of 10. Unfortunately, this remarkable advance in battlefield logistics has also resulted in an increase in the number of traumatically injured patients who are particularly susceptible to infections during their recovery.

..the spread of a pathogen that targets wounded GIs has triggered broad reforms in both combat medical care and the Pentagon's networks for tracking bacterial threats within the ranks. Interviews with current and former military physicians, recent articles in medical journals, and internal reports reveal that the Department of Defense has been waging a secret war within the larger mission in Iraq and Afghanistan - a war against antibiotic-resistant pathogens.
Acinetobacter is only one of many bacterial nemeses prowling around in ICUs and neonatal units in hospitals all over the world. A particularly fierce organism known as MRSA - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - infects healthy people, spreads easily, and accounts for many of the 90,000 fatal infections picked up in US hospitals each year.

story Wired News via Unknown News

~New war, new ways for the young to die.
Yes the crises in antibiotic resistant bacteria was there before Bush invaded Iraq but not for these young bucks and does.

[illus not from above links]

Photographs: Consumptive

>for example

Anamnensis

more photographs:
http://flickr.com/photos/consumptive/

Consumptives favorite links on Del.icio.us

How Bush is Deferring War Costs

story by Ron Scherer, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor | Yahoo
via Unknown News

~As far as I can tell Bush's Iraq War spending is NOT a secret protected by the Patriot Act and Homeland Security. The absence of official scrutiny for the past three years suggests that the people who matter in government, the ones who count and our democratically elected representatives have no complaints.

[illustration not from above]

Bartiromo Did Nothing Wrong, Says CNBC

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo has the support of her network in response to questions, and raised eyebrows, about her professional relationship with a former Citigroup boss.
The star financial anchor has reported extensively on Citigroup, and on Todd Thomson, formerly chief of Citigroup's wealth management unit.

Among other complaints, Thomson was faulted by Citigroup Chairman Charles Prince for the decision to spend $5 million to sponsor Sundance Channel programming that Bartiromo was expected to co-host. According to the (Wall Street) Journal, Bartiromo no longer will host the project.

Since 2004, Bartiromo has aired 11 major pieces on Citigroup, including four interviews with Thomson, according to the Journal's review of CNBC transcripts.
Michael J. Hanretta, a spokesman for Citigroup Inc., said Thomson "has left to pursue other interests. We are not commenting beyond that."
The succession of events has focused media scrutiny on Bartiromo, who, like any reporter, is expected not to get too close to, or accept favors from, the people and companies she covers.
On Friday CNBC said Bartiromo, 39, has done nothing improper.

Bartiromo — who's married to Jonathan Steinberg (son of financier Saul Steinberg).... gained the nickname "Money Honey" and became the network's face.
Besides her CNBC duties, she's also host of the nationally syndicated "Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo," has a syndicated daily radio report and writes regular columns for Business Week and Reader's Digest.

press release

~I'm sure there were sound fiscal reasons for Mr. Thomson investing Citigroups's $5 million to sponsor Bartiromo's project. Certainly there's nothing illegal about it.
Like my father often says, "if you can't help friends, who can you help? And if you use someone else's money, he'll know where to go for more fish."... My Dad's getting old.

[MB via google not above]

~You get the feeling cable tv is a big money maker? The Sundance Channel is a premium cable channel. I've never watched it. CNBC is basic cable. I never watch it but my cable-tv subscription helps keep it on the tube anyway. My checks for ComCast's services are like spare change--just pennies a month--I give to Maria Bartiromo and others. No need for them to starve.

Minimum Wage Filibuster

Google News (Advanced Search) from Jan 29 to Jan 21 lists 660+ news items that contain the words minimum wage filibuster

~The Republicans in the US Senate are trying to add tax breaks for business to the amendment-free minimum wage bill that passed the House. Perhaps best summed up by this headline from RushLimbaugh.com (subscription) "It's Not You Money Senator Kennedy!"

>compare and contrast the 3,500+ news stories for helen mirren academy published between Jan 29 and Jan 21 (from news sources located only in the US)

~I'm a fan of Helen Mirren. I'ld watch her drive a car, read, shop. I'ld watch her do anything; she's that good. But I don't think her winning an Academy Award will affect as many people's lives as a raise in the minimun wage.
(I like the way the Brits turn their best actresses into dames. That doesn't happen in America.)

Awesome Railgun...Navy Gives Thumb Up

...propelling its 7-pound projectile with electric current along parallel rails, has a range of 250 nautical miles and packs the same punch as a more-expensive Tomahawk cruise missile. It could take down an entire building with one shot. Plus, dangerous explosives aren't necessary, because this beast does the equivalent of throwing big rocks at 11,500fps. That's gotta hurt. *

[Charles Garnett, project director, (at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren) called the projectile fired by the railgun "a supersonic bullet," and the weapon itself is "a very simple device."
He compared the process to charging up a battery on the flash of a digital camera, then pushing the button and "dumping that charge," producing a magnetic field that drives the metal-cased ordnance instead of gun powder.]

The prototype fired at Dahlgren is only an 8-megajoule electromagnetic device, but the one to be used on Navy ships will generate a massive 64 megajoules. Current Navy guns generate about 9 megajoules of muzzle energy.

Elizabeth D'Andrea of the Office of Naval Research said a 32-megajoule lab gun will be delivered to Dahlgren in June.

press release (1/17/07) | Free Lance Star

*press release | Gizmodo

~No mention of the guidance system. Must be top secret.
Or if it's so cheap to operate it doesn't matter how often you miss the target?

Motivators

more Military Motivators

The Truth About Jonestown

The original body count done by the Guyanese was 408, and this figure was initially agreed to by U.S. Army authorities on site. However, over the next few days, the total of reported dead began to rise quickly. The Army made a series of misleading and openly false statements about the discrepancy. The new total, which was the official final count, was given almost a week later by American authorities as 913. A total of 16 survivors were reported to have returned to the U.S.

...the Americans proposed (a) theory — they had missed seeing a pile of bodies at the back of the pavilion. The structure was the size of a small house, and they had been at the scene for days. Finally, we were given the official reason for the discrepancy — bodies had fallen on top of other bodies, adults covering children.
It was a simple, if morbid, arithmetic that led to the first suspicions. The 408 bodies discovered at first count would have to be able to cover 505 bodies for a total of 913. In addition, those who first worked on the bodies would have been unlikely to miss bodies lying beneath each other since each body had to be punctured. Eighty-two of the bodies first found were those of children, reducing the number that could have been hidden below others. A search of nearly 150 photographs, aerial and close-up, fails to show even one body lying under another, much less 500.

http://www.outlawjournalism.com/news/?p=2416 | Outlaw News

~Nothing new in this article and no footnotes.

What if Jonestown wasn't a CIA experiment gone bad; i.e. no MKULTRA. Only a Christian work camp-transplanted cult that the Guyanese army together with their CIA advisors destroyed and looted? That's not to say Jones didn't use drugs and techniques he learned from his CIA buddies but to suggest there may have been more expedient less "top secret" and messier reasons for the murders and coverup.
How about a "military style police action" that went bad?
Set off by the congressman's assassination, that turned into a million-dollar heist, covered up by mass murder cooperatively and politic-ly (sic) reported as mass suicide?
Were the people who escaped into the jungle hunted and killed Waco style? Were some of them armed; did they resist their "rescuers"?

The assassination causes the Guyanese army with their US advisors to storm Jonestown while Jones is busy exorcising his demons and doing his killing thing. They're met with unexpected armed resistence and their response quickly and tragically gets out of hand.
They destroy the compound in order to save it and kill more (about the same, half-as-many) men, women and children as Jones?
Jim Jones was a monster but he was a monster with many influential friends. Better an atrocity blamed on one man and his dead followers then hundreds of witnesses with lawsuits requiring embarrassing answers from both Guyanese, California and US officials? An investigation and court cases that would've destroyed careers and wrecked Guyana as a tourist destination for generations to come.

Either mass murder/robbery or 'mind control experiment' the complicity of American and world journalists in these deaths is worth remembering.
If back in 1978(?) journalists and editors everywhere could find no fault with the story of 900+ American ciitizens suiciding themselves and their children with cyanide-laced kool-ade, imagine the fictions the dwindling ranks of the fifth estate must swallow and regugitate for mass consumption today?

In the jungles, deserts and remote places of the world the CIA always acts more llike mobsters than mad scientists?

The Bomb Project: Image Resources

http://www.firstpulseprojects.net/bombproject/Image-Info.html

[photo not from above links]

Photo-caption Non Sequitur

"Whoever feeds tigers should be careful not to give them living creatures, on account of their ferocity, which is aroused through killing. Care should be taken not to give them whole creatures, on account of the ferocity aroused by tearing them apart. Their hunger must be stilled in time to head off their ferocity."
--Chuang Tze (by way of "Notes from Hampstead")

Viewing Novels, Reading Films: Stanley Kubrick and the Art of Adaptation as Interpretation

Thesis

Bane, Charles

(Some) Keywords: Vladimir Nabokov red alert the short-timers Traumnovelle the killing Stanley Kubrick film studies film theory adaptation adaptation theory Dr. Strangelove Lolita full metal jacket
paths of glory pride and prejudice the French lieutenant's woman critical interpretation killer's kiss eyes wide shut adaptation history

Abstract
Greg Jenkins has observed that adaptation “is a presence that is woven into the very fabric of film culture.” Although this statement is true, no definitive theory of adaptation exists. ... The problem of adaptation stems from many sources. What, if anything, does a film owe the novel on which it is based? How, if possible, does a film remain faithful to its source? Is a film a version of a story or its own autonomous work of art? Who is the author of this work? What is an Author? Which text is given primacy: the novel or the film? What is a Text?
These questions, and many others, are at the heart of adaptation studies. This project does not pretend to address them all, nor does it claim to be the final answer to the question of adaptation. It does, however, provide a possible solution that is both theoretical and practical. It is theoretical in that it asks viewers to consider what a particular adaptation is doing with a film; practical in that it attempts to bring method to the madness by applying the theory to a sample case study: Stanley Kubrick. ... most of Kubrick’s adaptations are successful, a few are not; many of his films have surpassed their literary ancestors, others have elevated them to new heights; some stay rather faithful to the source text, others deviate greatly. This discussion will consider the films of Kubrick’s canon that center on two of his recurring themes, love and war, by considering each novel’s thematic appeal for Kubrick followed by an analysis of the film in terms of what it is doing with the text.

link to 8.50mb pdf through http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-07122006-171959/

thanks Diederik

~Perhaps related D's and S's exchange found [in the box] here:http://www.spitting-image.net/archives/006447.html

What is a text?

Gothic Nightmares

Tate Britain Past Exhibitions:

Fuseli Blake and the Romantic Imagination 15 February - 1 May 2006

Rm. 3 Superheroes

"The works in this selection show how the dynamic style developed by Fuseli and his contemporaries helped define a new image of the hero. Their paintings undermined the more restrained ideals of the past, and were orientated to sensationalist and Gothic tastes. This room is dominated by the large oil paintings on romantic and heroic themes with which Fuseli made his name at the Royal Academy exhibitions in the 1780s."

>for example

This is a scene from a Gothic narrative of Fuseli’s invention. The virile hero, waking from his enchanted sleep, raises his sword to attack a wizard, clasping a chained maiden by his side. The ghostly heads to the left are presumably lost or trapped souls; the manacled woman’s hand hidden to the right is that of another victim of Urma.

Henry Fuseli
Percival Delivering Belisane from the Enchantment of Urma exhibited 1783
Oil on canvas, 991 x 1257 mm
Presented by the National Art Collections Fund 1941

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/gothicnightmares/rooms/room3.htm

~"Gothic nightmares" and superheroes?

Why haven't these painting styles been copied or adapted by today's film animators?
Wouldn't you like to see figures from classic paintings move and talk?

Harlequin 2007 Romance Report

"Americans seem to always be on their PDA’s and cell phones, hard at work wherever they are. Or are they? There may be another reason men and women are intensely typing away on their electronic devices, and it isn’t business. Harlequin’s Romance Report 2007 found that more than 55% of men and 47% of women in the U.S. have sent a sexually explicit email, text or instant message to someone - proving you just may be able to mix business and pleasure.”

press release | Docuticker

~Are sexually explicit emails, text and instant messages now routinely cited in court issued "restraining orders", new anti-stalking legislation or forensic profiles of potential sex offenders?

My significant other and I enjoy texting phrases and short passges taken directly from Harlequin Romances! Sometimes to one another.

Medical Causes of Deaths in State Prisons 2001-2004

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
“Describes the specific medical conditions causing deaths in State prisons nationwide during a four-year period. For the leading medical causes of death, mortality rates are presented by gender, age, race and Hispanic origin, and the length of time served in prison. The report includes detailed statistics on cancer deaths. Mortality among older prisoners is examined in detail. Prisoner death rates are compared with rates in the general U.S. resident population. Data on medical treatments provided for these fatal illnesses are presented, along with findings on the presence of medical problems at time of admission to prison. State-by-state mortality rates are presented for the leading causes of illness deaths in appendix tables.”

http://www.docuticker.com/?p=10332">link to pdfs | Docuticker

~For those of you who like me see prison as your most affordable or inevitable retirement "choice".

EU Governments Directly Undermine Torture Ban

New York, January 23, 2007) – The European Parliament report adopted today on the role of EU states in CIA renditions tells only half the story when it comes to European complicity in torture, Human Rights Watch said in a new briefing paper...

"Diplomatic assurances simply do not protect against torture,” said (Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director of Human Rights Watch). “European governments have used these empty promises as a fig leaf to justify sending people to places where they risk being tortured.”

press release by way of Docuticker

~'A wink is as good as a nod...'

AK-47 Chair

@

How to Prepare for a Deployment in Iraq

>"military humor"

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2. Replace the garage door with a curtain

18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.

21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.

38. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard.

40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.

http://www.strategypage.com/humor/articles/howtoprepare.asp

Blog: Copyranter

http://copyranter.blogspot.com/

~Because there are sounds only dogs can hear.

Blog: Overheard Starbuck

http://overheardstarbuck.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_overheardstarbuck_archive.html

[photo not from link]

Handheld Nanotechnology Sensor Enables Point-of-Scare Screening

Scientists of the Biophysical Engineering Group of the University of Twente in The Netherlands have developed an ultrasensitive sensor that can be used in a handheld device to, within minutes, detect various viruses and measure their concentration. The sensor could be used to quickly screen people at hospitals, airports and emergency clinics to control outbreaks of diseases...

All it would take is a tiny sample of saliva, blood, or other body fluid. Dr. Aurel Ymeti and others present their results in February’s issue of Nano Letters

The essential innovation in the technique reported in this paper is the combining of an integrated optics interferometric (see wiki article: interferometer) sensor with antibody-antigen recognition approaches to yield a very sensitive, very rapid test for virus detection. The technology is amenable to miniaturization and mass-production, and thus has significant potential to be developed into a handheld, point-of-care device.

press release | Nanowerk News

~"Point-of-scare" does not appear via Google as many times as one might think.

[illus. google not Nanowerk]

What We Can Do About $cIENCE Journals

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html by John Baez

Teenager Admits to Killing Writer, But Has 'No Regrets'

>true crime

Turkish police have arrested a 17-year-old on suspicion of murdering Hrant Dink, Turkey's most prominent citizen of Armenian descent, who was shot dead in cold blood outside his newspaper office on Friday.
Ogun Samast, from the Black Sea town of Trabzon, told police: "I read on the internet that he [Dink] said, 'I am from Turkey but Turkish blood is dirty' and I decided to kill him ... I do not regret this."

The youth...was arrested as he was travelling home by bus, became the chief suspect after his father told police that he recognised him from footage captured by a security camera. Police said he was still carrying the murder weapon.

...Dink saw it all coming. In an article published in his newspaper the day before he died, he wrote: "In the corridors of the law courts, fascists were attacking me with racist curses. Hundreds of threats via phone calls, e-mails and letters were pouring down, increasing in number day by day ... It is obvious that those wishing to single me out and render me weak and defenceless have achieved their goal. My computer is full of messages full of rage and threats."
Yet he dared to hope that he would face them down. "I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon," he wrote, "but I know that in this country people do not touch pigeons. Pigeons can live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared, perhaps, but free..."
The bitter irony is that the Dink never said "Turkish blood is dirty". In the article for which he was convicted, [last year on a charge of "insulting Turkishness"] he had exhorted Armenians to "purify their blood of hatred for the Turks". In court Dink maintained that it was "a call for peace", but nationalists bent on punishing him for his prominence insisted that he was guilty.

Minors are often employed as hit-men in Turkey because they are interrogated by public prosecutors instead of police and minors' courts tend to hand out milder sentences.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's Prime Minister, condemned Dink's murder, saying "a bullet has been fired at Turkish democracy". After the arrests, he said: "We're going to continue investigations with the same determination."
But it was Mr Erdogan's government that passed the law making "insulting Turkishness" a criminal offence, and it has yet to repeal it despite vowing to do so. Dozens of writers and intellectuals have been accused under the law, including the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, but Dink was the only person to have been convicted.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2174987.ece
By Peter Popham Published: 22 January 2007

~To kill for one's people, nation, country, race, tribe, gang or crowd! It's something alright, that power... but not everything?
(I may've been bred to be hunted and killed by people like this teenager. )

[photo not from the Independent]

Chavez

[photo google: chavez (Scotsman 2007-01-09]

He pops up almost everywhere -- Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America and this week at the United Nations, denouncing U.S. policy with revolutionary fervor.
Like a recurring bad dream for the Bush administration, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is molding himself into one of the world's most pre-eminent anti-American leaders

>from Sept 2006: CHAVEZ'S ANTI-U.S. FERVOR; Emerging force among nonaligned nations

story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/21/MNGPDL9LS51.DTL

~He won't live out the decade.

I didn't know there were still "non-aligned nations". Aren't they called "terrorist states" now?

Taping Fights on Cell Phones at School

One video of three eighth graders fighting at a school in New York is circulating around after someone posted it on several internet sites. Officials at the school informed police, who arrested the girls involved, and charged them with assault and juvenile delinquency.

Back when some of (us?) were in school, if you missed a fight, you just missed it. But now kids are able to see it over and over again on camera phones and online.

story | WPDE-TV (ABC-News)

thanks Diederik

~The girls video mentioned above was all over Fox-Cable TV last week?

Never do anything in public you wouldn't want to see posted on the internet. (A corollary for the old rule of thumb: "Never post anything on the internet you wouldn't want everybody in the world to see.")

Man's Letter Brings Secret Service

The letter by Dan Tilli, 81, was published in Monday's edition of The Express-Times of Easton, Pa. It ended with the line, "I still believe they hanged the wrong man."

Two Secret Service agents questioned Tilli at his Bethlehem apartment Thursday, briefly searching the place and taking pictures of him, (for their files*) he said.
Bob Slama, special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Philadelphia office, said it was the agency's duty to investigate.
"We have no further interest in Danhe said.

It wasn't Tilli's first run-in with the federal government over his letter writing. Two FBI agents from Allentown showed up at his home last year about a letter he wrote advocating a civil war to unseat Bush, he said.

story

>*more from (Jan 20)

Tilli received a phone call from a Secret Service agent Thursday morning. The call surprised Tilli, but he was even more startled when he learned the caller and another dark-suited agent were sitting outside Tilli's Bethlehem apartment building at that very moment.
"They said, 'We're coming up,'" Tilli recalled Friday. "They were in the parking lot and they came up in two seconds."

The agents, who arrived about 10 a.m. after traveling 60 miles from Philadelphia, asked Tilli a little of everything: Do you have siblings? Have you considered committing suicide? ("Hell no," he responded.) Have you visited Washington, D.C.?

Express-Times editorial page editor James S. Flagg said he received a call Wednesday from a Secret Service agent, asking for Tilli's address and phone number. The agent said he was having trouble finding Tilli's information, which is unlisted.
Flagg said it is The Express-Times' policy not to disclose a letter writer's address or phone number -- even to the Secret Service.

Writer finds an agent -- from the Secret Service | Express Times

~Did Mr. Tilli say the two secret service agents mentioned last year's "run in"?

Did the Express-Times editor refuse to give the Secret Police Mr. Tilli's address and phone number or did he change the policy in this instance?

Bush's Iraq policy led to total failure

Bethlehem

http://www.nj.com/letters/expresstimes/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1168837502108500.xml&coll=2&thispage=4

~It took a little digging to find Mr. Tilli's letter.

Flight Ban for Anti-Bush Shirt

Mr Jasson was stopped as he was about to board the flight from Melbourne to London last Friday

The T-shift features an image of President George W Bush, along with the slogan "World's Number One Terrorist.

After clearing the international security checks at Melbourne Airport, he reportedly approached the gate manager to congratulate him on the company's new-found open-mindedness.
At that point, Mr Jasson was ordered to remove the T-shirt after being told it was a security threat and an item which might cause offence to other passengers.

He was offered the chance to board the flight wearing different clothing, but refused.

A Qantas spokesman defended the airline's decision, saying: "Whether made verbally or on a T-shirt, comments with the potential to offend other customers or threaten the security of a Qantas group aircraft will not be tolerated

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6285971.stm

~The Aussies got our backs! USA! USA! USA!

If Australia's airlines and secret police maintain "no-fly lists", Mr. Jasson may never fly again?

Do flights from Melbourne to London refuel in LA or fly over America's airspace? Was that the problem?

~Google Image links to two "World's Number One Terrorist" i.e. bush terrorist shirt images. Both too small to paste here. There's a number of images of "Bush International Terrorist" tee-Shirts for view and for sale however.

This "McVeigh" shirt photo was found there.
(Isn't it time we took this slogan back from America's nazi/militias?)

"Temporary Enjoyment Marriages" Back in Iraq

>Shiite Iraq

During Saddam's time, there was no religious freedom," said Faris al-Shareef, a sheik who lives in the mainly Shiite city of Hilla.

story (press release?) MSNBC/Wash Post

~I like the sheik's quote. It resonates.

Imagine an hour haggling over an unwritten agreement.

You think American courts would grant our gays something like 'temporary enjoyment marriages'?
Or are our adoption laws more than adequate?

Jaywalking UK Historian Causes Stir in Atlanta

>true crime

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto has complained his arrest was a "violent assault."

According to a police report, officer Kevin Leonpacher, working off-duty for hotel security and wearing a jacket marked "Atlanta Police," blew his whistle for Fernandez-Armesto to stop crossing Courtland Street in central Atlanta on Jan. 4 and directed him to a crosswalk.
The historian ignored Leonpacher who then asked "as many as ten times" for Fernandez-Armesto's identification. When he refused and instead demanded Leonpacher's identification, the officer made an arrest, the report said.
"I asked him to put his hands behind his back so that he could be handcuffed .... He pulled away and began to wrestle with me. After about a minute I was able to wrestle him to the ground ... as I called for backup," the report said.

story

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editorial:
History lesson in jaywalking case with link to YouTube interview with prof. (1/11/07)

The History News Network (really) version: http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/33876.html

[photo google not from above links]

Felipe Fernández-Armesto's wiki bio (updated with the "Atlanta Incident")

[>Diederik was moved to write: "Great story. [link to wiki article above] My hands just itch to make a short movie of this, academic Jaywalker versus brutal "just doing my job' copper asking for "ID". Tragic music and slow-motion wrestling chaos. Some Foucaultian slogans mumbled by male voice over. Pernennial story. Great. I could cry right now."

Stubbornson's reply: "It could work as a modern dance piece. Various couples of various genders spaced around a huge gymnasium-style floor which the audience views from slightly above. Uniforms not required. The couples all do the same walking, rushing, touching, ignoring, avoiding, clutching, flailing, grabbing, kicking, falling, slamming motions--in sequence but not necessarily in tandem--- over and over and over until the audience leaves and/or the 'backup' dancers arrive to subdue and surround the couples from the audience's view. Lights fade. Music by Phillip Glass or Steven Reich."]

>also Stubbornson: One might wonder what conclusions the professor would have drawn had he been tasered or clubbed while arrested for assaulting the police officer(s). Then represented by a public defender who'ld insist he take the usual plea agreement for assault ---"With good behavior you'll be out in 18 months."? During those eight hours spent in stir did he get a glimmer of how badly it could have gone?
It's nice that the Atlanta Police Department allows its moonlighting officers to wear jackets identifying them as "Atlanta Police". Did the police union have to fight for that concession or was it granted without much discussion?
The History News Network story suggests the professor was unable or unwilling to believe the hotel's rent-a-cop had the authority to arrest him.
Did the rent-a-cop? Handcuffs on the street? While being paid by the hotel? [Perhaps related: The Private Arm of the Law on Spitting Image.]
By the way when is it permissable for a private citizen--a perp, skell or vic-- to ask a police officer (or 'rent-a-cop'...who knew?) for his or her identification? Never on the street in these War on Terror times? Never without one's lawyer and/or a film crew from a national broadcasting network present? Only at the front door of one's home and apartment (if your name appears on the mortgage or lease) or place of business? Never when the officer's in command of some situation, no matter how trivial, while wearing a jacket that says "Blankville Police Department" certainly. (We homelanders know that.)
Anonymous police authority is much more intimidating and effective, don't you think?---and safer for the families and friends of America's 700,000+ duly-sworn taxpayer-funded law enforcement officers.

This gives me an idea for a tourist campaign. Sell American-style police tactics to masochists overseas. Offer package deals that include pre-travel classroom instruction absolutely guaranteed to have five or six of America's finest doing things to them for free they could never afford at home. Being bad in America will guarantee a vacation they won't ever forget.

(USA) Muslim Girl Magazine

*

"The first cover girl is Wardah Chaudhary, 16, of Tulsa, Oklahoma...

"One thing I know for sure is that I am not behind in anything just because I wear hijab," she says referring to her Muslim style of dressing. "To all the girls that are reading this, I want them to know to be proud of who you are."

[Ausma Khan, editor of Muslim Girl Magazine, which is out with a 25,000-copy premier issue... expects its circulation to be four times that in two years.]

press release

*http://www.muslimgirlmagazine.com/web/index.cfm

Hands On

X2

Poetry (from Adrienne Rich)

Burning Oneself Out

We can look into the stove tonight
as into a mirror, yes,

the serrated log, the yellow-blue gaseous core

the crimson-flittered grey ash, yes.
I know inside my eyelids
and underneath my skin

Time takes hold of us like a draft
upward, drawing at the heats
in the belly, in the brain

You told me of setting your hand
into the print of a long-dead Indian
and for a moment, I knew that hand,

that print, that rock,
the sun producing powerful dreams
A word can do this

or, as tonight, the mirror of the fire
of my mind, burning as if it could go on
burning itself, burning down

feeding on everything
till there is nothing in life
that has not fed that fire @

Power

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power. @

>see also For the Record

by way of http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/adrienne_rich (bottom of the page)

Vietnam War '68-69: Richard Calmes

"This is where I started my lifelong love of photography. For the first half of my tour, as an Architect, I designed and supervised construction projects. Then I discovered photography! For the second half of my tour, I was a "Combat Photographer".

These photos have been in storage for 35 years. I have some negatives that I have scanned. For other shots, all I have are prints. I also have a few slides that have mold on them. All were developed and printed using water that one can only describe as wet. A glass of it was brown and barely clear. "

Taxi (This was typical. There must be 25 people piled on this 3 wheeled motor scooter taxi. Sorry it is not focused well as I was driving a jeep and taking this shot at the same time. No autofocus back then.) large

Road Sign large

Daily Boot Cleaning large

more http://www.pbase.com/rcalmes/vietnam w/comments*

*"Brings back some good and some bad but all were real."

Art: L'Hospice

>installation

another view's detail*

[photo grammar.police + another view]

2002
Technique mixte (six figures de cire, téléviseur, divers éléments)
Dimensions variables
Collection Martin Z. Margulies
The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Miami, USA

Gilles Barbier cv/oeuvres (*)http://www.galerie-vallois.com/fr/artistes/barbier/oe8.html

Rules for Terror Suspect Trials: Hearsay...Coerced Testimony OK

WASHINGTON (Jan.15) : The Defense Department's rules for upcoming detainee trials would allow terrorism suspects to be convicted and perhaps executed using hearsay evidence and some coerced testimony.

The rules are fair, said the department, which released them...in a manual for the expected trials.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/18/america/NA-GEN-US-Detainees-Trials.php

thanks Conscientious

~The miltary's ideas about justice have always been quaint.

[photo not from above]

La propagande avec les enfants

>postcards

http://propagande1418.free.fr/enfants/patriotismepage1.htm

Predator Spy Plane Crashed in Iraq

The unmanned, MQ-1 Predator, valued at more than $4 million, went down at 11:35 p.m. Baghdad time in an unpopulated area, [five miles southeast of Baghdad International Airport], [U.S. Central Command Air Forces officials] said. No injuries or property damage on the ground was reported.

"The crash does not appear to be from hostile activity," the statement read...

Most of the nation's Predators are assigned to squadrons at Creech Air Force Base at Indian Springs, 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Creech is a sister installation of Nellis Air Force Base.

The MQ-1's primary mission is to conduct armed reconnaissance using high-tech video cameras and Hellfire missiles.

Once they have been launched by operators at overseas locations in Iraq and elsewhere, airborne Predators are sometimes controlled via satellite links by pilots and sensor operators in ground stations more than 7,500 miles away in Nevada.

press release

>see also How the Predator UAV works | How Stuff Works

~At night near the airport sounds like a routine flight. Less risky than foot patrols.
How many unmanned spy planes are flying tonight...every night?
(I think there's one circling my apartment complex right now.)

[MQ-1 photo with missiles not from above link]

Fun with...Filters

X2

TV: When Women Rule The World Announced By Fox

What if it was “a woman’s world”? What if women made ALL the decisions? If men were their subjects? These questions and more will be explored when a group of strong, educated and independent women, tired of living in a man’s world and each with a personal axe to grind, rule over a group of unsuspecting men used to calling the shots on WHEN WOMEN RULE THE WORLD.

The unscripted series will reveal how women and men react in a world where women are in charge and men are subservient, and each gender’s ability to adapt to a new social order will be put to the test.

The participants will be brought to a remote, primitive location where the women will have the opportunity to “rule”...

press release

800,000 Missing Kids Really?

(ABC) News reports cited a statistic that 800,000 children disappear every year—or about 2,000 a day

... the total number includes those who fall into several different categories: family abduction, nonfamily abduction, runaways, throwaways (abandoned children), or lost and "otherwise missing" children.
...only 115 were "stereotypical kidnappings," defined in one study as "a nonfamily abduction perpetrated by a slight acquaintance or stranger in which a child is detained overnight, transported at least 50 miles, held for ransom or abducted with the intent to keep the child permanently, or killed."

But in other ways, the NCIC may understate the figures. Many missing persons aren't reported at all—a 1997 study estimated that only 5 percent of nonfamily abductions (in which a nonfamily member detains a child using force for more than an hour) get reported to police. Some police departments may not even bother filing a report when a kid runs away from home for a few days. It's also easy to lose track of abduction cases, since some of them get filed away under associated crimes, like homicide or sexual assault.

http://www.slate.com/id/2157738/

~With only a 115 "stereotypical kidnappings" a year shouldn't the names and photos of those few kids be all over the media; at least as familiar (or repeated and shown as often) as the "Golden Globe" winners?
Kidnapped-kid fan clubs? News letters? "Adopt a kidnapped kid till he or she's found" societies?

>not related on Spitting Image:
DOD DOCTRINE ON RECOVERING CAPTURED MILITARY PERSONNEL

"The President of the United States can choose to exercise military, diplomatic, or civil options, or a combination thereof, to recover isolated personnel" and each of these options has been utilized over the past two decades, the report notes.

link to entry with link to DOD report

[photo not with above links]

~Of course kidnapped or missing American children are not 'isolated personnel'.

(On) The Decline of Mags for "Real Men"

The author (Senior Atlantic editor Jon Zobenica) notes that, as Playboy's idealized (and generally unattainable) eroto-sophistication is replaced by monogamy-scorning and glorification of pubscence, women are reduced from willing participants in the seduction game to bikini-clad male Doppelgangers who host pro wrestling and squeal their love for football and X Box. To illustrate the conceptual contrast with Hef's Advisor, Zobenica offers this FHM excerpt by Richard Roeper on reasons to "Stay Single!":

Never having to pay alimony.
Pizza for breakfast. And nobody to give you a hard time about it.
You know those baseball hats, video games and autographed sports stuff guys store int he garage when they get married? I have it all on display in my guest bedroom. If I was married, that room would be a nursery.
You don't have to pretend to be interested in Desperate Housewives.
Vegas. Guilt-free.

blog entry: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2007/01/17/from-playboy-to-_e_38653.html
by Melissa Lafsky

[photo not with above]

Ad: Extreme Chickfights Reloaded

Year: 2006; Genre: Sport,Documentary..
Studio: Image Entertainment, Inc.
Cast: Extreme Chickfight-Reloaded..

SO YOU THINK FIGHT CLUBS ARE AN URBAN LEGEND? THINK AGAIN. THEY'RE REAL. THEY'RE HARDCORE. AND THEY'RE RULED BY GIRLS.

Extreme Chick Fights: Reloaded delivers another extreme DVD in the only series that gets inside the secret world of Fightclubs4girls, where women take the hits and deliver the pain. Bored housewives and accountants by day, in the ring they're the baddest chicks this side of the Mississippi and ready to explode.
No blood pellets. No acting. No mercy. Just 100% real, 100% underground, 100% uncensored ass kicking. Our cameras go between the blows to catch the blood and the tears as female fighters throw down in secret warehouse grudge matches and backyard bare-knuckle brawls-fist-to-jaw action so hardcore it will make you scream! Can you take it? If not, then get out of the way, 'cause these girls are kicking butt and taking names. What's yours?

>from Diederik who asks, "what is this world coming to?"
Diederik is Dutch and lives in Holland.

Heaven is Crowded

It is possible that the human dead outnumber the human living. One question secular society still asks is where all the dead go, both their bodies in time and space, as well as their memories in image and memory. Sometimes the question gets asked differently than it has in traditional religious cultures, sometimes it gets muted and subdued. This gallery is dedicated to two different but related crowds of the dead, one corporeal and one immaterial. It asks how death on a large human scale can make sense and take new forms of representation. The facts and images assembled here respond to two areas of public concern- one, twentieth-century mass fatalities of urban and national disaster, the other, commemorative efforts of new sacred geographies and monuments to signify more and more individual human endpoints.

http://shl.stanford.edu/Crowds/galleries/massmem/page1.htm

by Scott Combs

1913 Armory Show

galleries

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MUSEUM/Armory/armoryshow.html

~I was there in a previous incarnation.
(Sweeping the floors every night.)

Sex Toy or Baby Toy Quiz

In practice, sex toys and baby toys have nothing in common. However, looked at from a different perspective, these molded plastic creations can seem all too similar. Take our quiz and see if you can tell the difference

http://www.homemade-sex-toys.com/quiz1/

~"You fail. Stay out of the bedroom. Not to mention the nursery."

Film 240 Section 2: Pornographies On/Scene

Course description

Instructor: Linda Williams

This seminar will bring together debates about the nature of pornography with debates about the nature of the visual. Both will be considered in relation to the (mostly unwritten) history of American visual pornographies and with an eye towards imagining, and even contributing to this history. What, for example, is the canon of hard-core pornography? We will concentrate on two moments in the history of moving image pornography: an earlier era of “obscenity,” in which explicit sexual images were kept off-scene for the consumption of private elites in the era of the stag film, and a more contemporary, and increasingly electronic era of “on/scenity” in which pornographies of all sorts become available to wide varieties of consumers, including those to whom it was once forbidden. Although moving-image pornographies will be our primary objects of study, this seminar will also consider the different rhetorics of still and image moving images which aim to arouse, techniques of arousal, and related popular images which also aim to "move" the bodies of spectator/users. Approximately one third of the class will be devoted to general readings in the growing “field” of pornography studies, another third to the question of what constitutes the canon of the stag era (here I will invite those interested to imagine a two disk DVD with notes arguing for what constitutes this canon) and another third to the burning question of electronic, interactive pornographies on small screens.

Requirements:

A short response paper and oral presentation on one or more reading; a 20-page paper on some aspect of visual pornography; ten-minute conference presentation of this final paper; active participation in all aspects of the seminar and the final conference.

NB: Some of the images to be studied in this seminar may be offensive or arousing. Please realize that curiosity about this course does not mean that you are actually prepared to look closely at a wide variety of explicit sexual representations for an entire semester. Most of our class sessions will have required prior screenings. Because of the sensitive nature of the material, auditors are discouraged.

Required Books:

--Michel Foucault. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Random House, 1978.

–--Walter Kendrick, The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture. New York: Viking Press, 1996.

--Laura Kipnis, Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America. Grove Press, 1996.

--Peter Lehman, ed. Pornography: Film and Culture. Rutgers U.P, 2006

--Annie Potts. The Science Fiction of Sex: Feminist Deconstruction and the Vocabularies of Heterosex.

--Linda Williams. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible. U.C.Press, Revised Edition. 1989/1999.

------. Porn Studies. Duke U.P., 2004.

link

~This reminds me of a joke:
Q: "How do you tell a sex-toy from a kid's toy?"
A: "Location, location, location."

Open Video Project

http://www.open-video.org/index.php

~On the academic side of entertainment. Acadetainment? Enterdemic?

"a plague of pretzels"

The Logic of a Wider MidEast War

White House press secretary Tony Snow dismisses expectations of war with Iran as an “urban legend” and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace says that “from a military standpoint” there’s “no need to cross the Iranian border.” But there are still strong reasons to suspect the Iraq War may soon spill over to Iran and possibly Syria.

article By Robert Parry

thanks Conscientious

~I hope this is one of those news articles that a year from now will look totally ridiculous.

We're praying for you Mr. President. You and your policy makers and their friends in the Pentagon.

>maybe related: Why the Democrats Can't Stop the Surge by Walter Sharpiro | Salon

~What he says holds true for Somalia, Iran and Syria also?

Northrop's Anti-Aircraft Missile Sensor is Put to the Test

The aerospace contractor starts using Guardian device on FedEx planes today. The system is designed to thwart shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.

Weighing about as much as two airline passengers and their luggage, the Guardian is a pod that clings to the rear of a plane's belly. Four sensors on the pod watch for shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles, also known as Man-Portable Air Defense Systems or MANPADS.
If such a missile is launched at the plane, a turret on the pod shoots a laser at the missile to disrupt its guidance signals and throw it off course. The laser does not actually destroy the missile. The invisible laser beam is safe to the human eye, Northrop said

The technology is based on a Northrop-made military system called the Nemesis that is used mostly on cargo planes such as the C-17 and C-130.

(Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif) and Northrop officials cited the FBI's warnings of the threat from such missiles and an unsuccessful 2002 MANPADS attack on an Israeli airliner in Kenya.

press release

~Funny with all the security procedures for individuals and their personal items inside airports we travelers flying America's friendly skies forget the threats from outside the aircraft. But Northrup and Senator Boxer haven't!

Photo and 'aircraft self-protection information' from
Shake It Off Your Tail | Armada International

Taser Launches "Stylish" Stun Gun

US stun gun maker Taser is unveiling a sleeker version of its controversial weapon aimed at safety and fashion conscious members of the public.
Available in pink, blue, silver and black, the gun fits into a handbag like a mobile phone.

The new device is likely to be significantly cheaper than the current, larger civilian model - which sells for about $1,000..

press release | BBC

~On tv in the last month I've seen tasers being used three different times. Product placement?
Once in a sitcom as a joke: "he had it coming, ha ha". Once as a mistake; "he didn't have it coming; why'd she do that?"--- in a prime-time soap opera and once in an ad for the reality-show "Armed and Famous".
Neither the two ficitional characters nor the person who was really being tasered showed much discomfort. The two characters fell down, rolled and or seized for a bit and then got up or were all better in a manner of seconds. The "Armed and Famous" guy was supported so he didn't fall down. His knees buckled a little but there was no seizure. He did look genuinely surprised and distressed but he only stopped talking during the few seconds the current was applied. I don't think he soiled himself.

I've yet to see a woman being tasered (fictionally or as a demonstration) on tv. I've seen tv detectives: discover a taser owned by a rapist (shown but but not named); mention a taser ('she had one of these' found among a victim's personal effects and one time a heard a tv crimefighter say something to the effect "first he shocked her with this, then dragged her into the bushes."

How will I not be tasered?

Pregnant (SC) Women May Have to View Ultrsound Before Abortion

The...bill, S.84, would require an ultrasound to determine the gestational age of the fetus that would be shown to patients before all abortions. It also would mandate that a patient or her parent or guardian get information about fetal development and alternatives to abortion.

(South Carolina State) Sen. Kevin L. Bryant, a sponsor of the bill, said...
"I feel the child in the womb does have rights, but I don't think this limits anyone's access to an abortion," he said. "It does allow for a more informed decision because the mother would see a picture of the child in the womb."

story

~This is interesting. Do the majority of American highschool health classes require students to see films of fetus emancipation; i.e. humans being born? Caesarian births?

I'ld like military recruiters to be required by law to show prospective inductees films or photos of the effects bullets, bombs, and incendiaries have on living human beings. e.g. photos of collaterally damaged Iraqi and Afghanistan children. Such a requirement wouldn't limit access to military life. (The films and photos would probably be a boon for recruitment.)

GI Deemed Homicidal Before Attack

>True Crime

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - An Army private charged with the slaughter of an Iraqi family was diagnosed as a homicidal threat by a military mental health team three months before the attack.
Pfc. Steven D. Green was found to have "homicidal ideations" after seeking help from an Army Combat Stress Team in Iraq on Dec. 21, 2005.

The treatment was several small doses of Seroquel - a drug to regulate his mood - and a directive to get some sleep, according to medical records obtained by the AP. The next day, he returned to duty...The... in the southern Baghdad suburbs known as the "Triangle of Death."

On March 12, 2006, Iraqi police reported a break-in at the home of a family in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles from Baghdad. The intruders shot and killed the father, mother and two young daughters. The older girl, 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, was raped and her body set afire.

The carnage first was assumed to be the work of insurgents. That changed in late June when two members of Green's unit told their superiors of suspicions that soldiers were involved in the killings. Now the Army believes Green and four other soldiers are responsible. One of them has confessed and provided information to prosecutors; in testimony at his court-martial, the soldier identified Green as the ringleader.

Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, psychiatry counsel to the Army Surgeon General...defended the military's policies regarding the treatment of emotionally or psychologically distressed soldiers.
"If unresponsive to treatment and/or a persistent danger to self or others, they will be evacuated," Ritchie said in an e-mail.

The AP also has learned:

Three months passed without Army doctors and clinicians from the Combat Stress Team having any contact with Green. He was summoned for a second examination on March 20, 2006 - eight days after the killing of the family. Green was diagnosed as having an anti-social personality disorder and declared unfit for service. The process of discharging him began a week later and he was sent home.

The Army's own investigation of Green's initial treatment, prompted by concerns he and others would use mental health problems as a defense in trial, is highly critical. Among the most salient findings from a July review of Green's treatment: "Although a safety assessment was conducted, there is no safety plan addressing how Soldier (Green) will keep from acting on his homicidal thoughts."

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Bowler, a psychiatrist and Army reservist from California who took over the Combat Stress Team with Green's unit in January, recommended his discharge after the second examination in March. Yet she wrote a final evaluation that said Green exhibited no traits that would indicate dangerously erratic or homicidal moods. Green deployed to Iraq in September 2005 from Fort Campbell with a battalion from the 101st Airborne Division's 502nd Infantry Regiment

Eleven days before Green's first visit with the stress team in December 2005, he and five others were manning a checkpoint when an Iraqi civilian approached, according to testimony in military hearings. The civilian was familiar because of his status as a sometimes informant. He greeted the soldiers warmly before pulling a pistol from his belt and shooting two of them at point-blank range.

Green's behavior worsened after that, according to commanders. He was directed to visit doctors a second time. Eight days later, Bowler told commanders that Green was unfit for service, according to documents. The discharge process for Green concluded in May 2006.

The Pentagon issued new guidelines in November that prevent personnel with certain pre-existing mental problems from deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan. Clinicians evaluating whether a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan is fit for service are now required to review all medical records. Mental illnesses that are not expected to be resolved in one year will be cause for discharge.

Outline of the crime:

The plot to rape and kill was hatched as the soldiers hit golf balls at a checkpoint. They had seen the older daughter on patrols in the area. After drinking whiskey bought from Iraqi policemen, they masked their faces and crept through backyards in afternoon daylight to get to the family's home.

They knew the family kept a gun in one bedroom for protection.

Once in the house, Green herded the father, mother and 5-year-old daughter to another room, closed the door and shot them dead. Green had blood on his clothes and boots when he returned.

Green and at least two others took turns raping the other daughter before killing her with the family's AK-47. They set her body on fire with kerosene dumped from a lamp in the kitchen in an effort to hide evidence.

Steven Green is in custody at an undisclosed location in Kentucky, according to federal law-enforcement officials. Prosecutors have not said if they will seek the death penalty.

Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, 22, of Chambersburg, Pa.; Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, of Barstow, Calif.; and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, 23, of Huffman, Texas, have been charged with rape and murder and await courts-martial. They are in custody at Fort Campbell.

Spc. James P. Barker, 24, of Fresno, Calif., pleaded guilty in November as part of an agreement to testify against the others.

story | Cincinnatti Post via Unknown News

~While hitting golf balls in the "Triangle of Death"...

>from Spitting Image' archives Iraqi Rape Soldier Jailed for Life

>from Steven D. Green's scrapbook (maybe)

Steven D. Green Future Non-Person | Thoughtless for the Day

Unveiled Threats

A Bush appointee's crude gambit on detainees' legal rights

MOST AMERICANS understand that legal representation for the accused is one of the core principles of the American way. Not, it seems, Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. In a repellent interview yesterday with Federal News Radio, Mr. Stimson brought up, unprompted, the number of major U.S. law firms that have helped represent detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

"Actually you know I think the news story that you're really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request through a major news organization, somebody asked, 'Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there,' and you know what, it's shocking," he said.

Mr. Stimson proceeded to reel off the names of these firms, adding, "I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out."

...Mr. Stimson, during the interview, called Guantanamo "certainly, probably, the most transparent and open location in the world."

editorial | WashPost via Harpers Weekly

~"Let's run it up the bunker's flag-pole and see who gets a chubby?"

>see also Why I defend "terrorists"

An open letter to Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, from a lawyer representing five men at Guantánamo.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/01/17/guantanamo/index.html By Anant Raut

thanks Conscientious

XPeeps

"We try for an amateur reality kind of thing," Mr N told AFP

press release

http://www.xpeeps.com/

~Maybe seeing rank amateurs mixed in with the pros will be interesting.

Somalia: US Airstrike Kills 30

09/01/2007

An AC-130 gunship flying from Djibouti carried out the attack in southern Somalia after US intelligence tracked the operatives with an unmanned aerial drone, CBS news first reported on Monday...

story

~Note the use of the unmanned aerial drone.

update Jan 12: U.S. air attack in Somalia missed al Qaeda suspects

None of the three most-wanted al Qaeda suspects believed to be hiding inside southern Somalia was killed by a U.S. air strike earlier this week, a senior U.S. official here said Thursday.
"The three high-value targets are still of intense interest to us," said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

The attack Sunday (Jan 7.) night by a U.S. Air Force AC-130 killed eight to 10 people believed to be tied to al Qaeda, according to the official.
Previous reports from other U.S. and Somali sources suggested that among the dead might be suspects in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or the 2002 bombing of a Kenyan seaside resort and a subsequent missile attack against an Israeli airliner.
In an interview Thursday with BBC's Somali-language news service, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger confirmed that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who is wanted by the FBI for his alleged role in the 1998 attack, has not been captured or killed.

story | SF Chronicle via Unknown News

>update (Jan 16): Nomads report deaths from airstrikes in middle-of-nowhere region of Somalia

Nomads in Waraha, near Warsow, said that seven men there, returning from a wedding ceremony, were killed in a Jan. 8 airstrike. An Associated Press reporter saw nine trucks with Somali number plates burned in Waraha. The nomads say that the Waraha strike was the first one, followed by one on Warsow.

Khalif Abdi, a nomad in Warsow, said that he saw white men in green military uniforms in the area a day after the air strike, when he went to fetch water.

"I don't know their exact numbers. But some were standing by a chopper that was on the site, others were scattered in the jungle. I feared they may harm me, so I sneaked out of the area," said Abdi.

"We didn't expect the superpower U.S. to target us with air strikes, while we need humanitarian aid," said Ugas Mohamed Shangalow, a clan leader in the neighboring Hayo village. "I can confirm that those who were killed in both strikes in Waraha and Warsow were civilians. They were not posing any danger to the world. They hail from local clans. We know them by their names."

story | IHT

~These are the 'high value' Al Qaeda members whose deaths made headlines around the world.
Someone very high up in the Pentagon got their hands on bad information, (bad 'intel')?

[photo defenselink\ not news story]

Book Review: The Meccano of Life

In Martyn Amos's Genesis Machines, Steven Poole discovers how to turn some DNA into 50 billion smiley faces...

Amos's fascinating book shows how such miniature manipulation is a step on the road to "truly programmable matter"..."Science-fiction authors tell stories of 'microbots' - incredibly tiny devices that can roam around under their own power, sensing their environment, talking to one another and destroying intruders," Amos notes. "Such devices already exist, but we know them better as bacteria."

.....

Once you have built a molecular computer that has the same sort of error-correction, support, repair and replication functions as, say, a human cell, what have you done? You have, perhaps, created life from the ground up. Dr Frankenstein had nothing on the new generation of "biohackers". Biohackers are like computer hackers, but instead of fiddling with, say, website code, they are fiddling with the "code of life".

... Researchers have tried to build safety catches into their work by giving, for example, killer genes to their designer bacteria, so that the bugs automatically die after a set period. The problem is that evolution finds a way around it: a mutant copy of the killer gene arises that doesn't work properly, and a new generation of the little monsters lives on. This was entirely predicted, says Amos happily of the experiment, which is not perfectly reassuring. Evolution can also be harnessed, on the other hand, by building a rough version of the system you want and then letting it mutate into the most efficient configuration. Of course, you wouldn't want this stuff escaping into the wild. Amos ends on the sensible note that, like any disruptive technology, biocomputing requires rational political discussion and supervision..

compete review http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1983057,00.html
by Steven Poole via Unspeak

"Each is about 100 nanometers across (1/1000th the width of a human hair), 2 nanometers thick, and each is comprised of about 14,000 DNA bases. 7000 of these DNA bases belong to a long single strand..."[photo from CalTech not review\ may not be the smiley face mentioned above]

YouTube: U2 "Window in the Skies"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VskbxuehP3I

~The music and lyrics are nothing new for U2 but the clever use of clips from dozens of rock performances from the past fifty years make it something else again. A paean to the power of rock and roll.

Predators May Have Been at Rally: Police

THE sexual predators who have terrorised dozens of women on Brisbane's bikeways in the past year may have been at a rally today where angry women warned they will be caught, police have said.

Women turned up in droves for the Walk Without Fear Rally at Kelvin Grove on the city's northside to protest against at least two men who have attacked 38 women.
But among those who gave their support at the rally could have been the very people the women were protesting against, police said.
Acting Police Commissioner Dick Conder said it was possible the attackers themselves had been drawn to the event.
"I wouldn't be surprised if they do turn up today,'' Mr Conder said.
"People have been known in past to turn up to rallies and it's dangerous ground for them because there would be a number of people who have been subject to those assaults here today (who could recognise them).''
The attacks began in January last year and have included two rapes.
They are thought to be the work of at least two men; a cyclist who gropes women as he rides past, and another more violent man who surprises his victims from behind.

press release | News.com.au

~I don't understand this news item. Are the police or is the newspaper trying to frighten women more? Or is it meant as a warning to the predators?
You would think the police would have final approval over press releases before they're printed.

Cops don't need the aggravation caused by rallys so "stay home ladies and let us do our jobs"?
Or is this the Australian, the Brisbane, the newspaper's way of helping women raise awareness of these crimes?

The Acting Police Commissioner said a number of quotable things and it's just his bad luck that the newspaper chose to lede with this?

From H. (Unknown News): " Yeah, it could just be a too-chatty cop. And of course, it's true, the bad guys could've been there. It's also a fairly valueless chunk of information, unless there's value in creating fear. If the rally is seen by cops as a complaint that police should catch these bad guys, then the comment could be seen as a rather mean-spirited response. And it's usually to any police department's advantage to have the population fearful of crime -- leads to overtime, more hires, etc."

Search (Suche): OutNow Filmdatenbank

for example

http://outnow.ch/Media/Img/1964/WomanInTheDunes/

http://outnow.ch/search/

~I found film stills here (die bilder) not found at IMDb or via Google Image Suche.

Teacher Faces 40 years for Porn in Classroom, Blames Adware

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/13/teacher_faces_40_yea.html

~When I need to punish myself I engage in solitary activities like eating, drinking and watching television. Nothing that requires children, classrooms, school officials or law enforcement personnel. I'm lucky.

Is there such a thing as a "factitious criminal syndrome"? See "Factitous Disorders, Including Munchausen Syndrome" (web-site): http://www.munchausen.com/

Diederik understands: "What a cruel cybernetic drama. But 40 years? That's just...American.
'I'm a kid, my teacher has a popup, and I will never see her/him again until I am 50, and she/he is dead?' (However porn popups are usually associated with illegal software sites. Hang her high!) D.

Vera Hartmann: SFV (San Fernando Valley) Porn

http://www.verahartmann.com/main.html

by way of Conscientious

Baghdad 2025: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums

In his tour de force Planet of Slums, Mike Davis observes, "the Pentagon's best minds have dared to venture where most United Nations, World Bank or State Department types fear to go...[T]hey now assert that the 'feral, failed cities' of the Third World --especially their slum outskirts -- will be the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century." Pentagon war-fighting doctrine, he notes, "is being reshaped accordingly to support a low-intensity world war of unlimited duration against criminalized segments of the urban poor."

In fact, this past October the U.S. Army issued its latest "urban operations" manual. "Given the global population trends and the likely strategies and tactics of future threats," it declares, "Army forces will likely conduct operations in, around, and over urban areas -- not as a matter of fate, but as a deliberate choice linked to national security objectives and strategy, and at a time, place, and method of the commander's choosing."

Today, DARPA, and other Pentagon ventures like the Small Business Innovation Research Program (in which the "DoD funds early-stage R&D projects at small technology companies") and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program (where funding goes to "cooperative R&D projects involving a small business and a research institution") are awash in "urban operations-oriented programs..

Current UO-oriented systems under development include:

VisiBuilding: This is a program aimed at addressing "a pressing need in urban warfare: seeing inside buildings" by developing technology that will allow U.S. forces to "determine building layouts, find anomalous quantities of materials," and "locate people within the building." According to Edward Baranoski of DARPA's Special Projects Office, Visibuilding will allow "a lot of opportunity to stake out buildings and really see inside." Think of it as a high-tech military Peeping Tom system that lets U.S. troops spy inside foreign homes and make judgments about whatever they might deem "anomalous" inside. While VisiBuilding is in development, troops will have to be content with "Radar Scope" which allows them to "sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building."

Camouflaged Long Endurance Nano Sensors: This "real-time ult