February 28, 2007
Fun with...Filters
2X
~I'm not very excited about this image but it's been awhile since I've done anything. Also I figure that if through some miracle I'ld been steadily selling prints or preferable full color transparecies with lightboxes of other "Fun With...Filters" creations, I'ld invest some of that money to 'realize' (de-virtualize?) this one on paper or plastic too.
If I'ld show it for money, I should show it for free.
Mexicans cross 'the border' – at a theme park
...Mexico's take on adventure tourism, a five-hour trek that goes well past midnight. Residents pay to walk in mud past their ankles, balance on ledges – in pitch black – that drop steeply, and sprint across corn fields, kicking up dirt and rocks as they run from fake US border patrol officers dressed in camouflage.
The park was begun by the Hñahñu, an indigenous community in El Alberto that has been decimated by immigration to the US. Bernardino Martin, El Alberto's municipal leader, says the attraction has been criticized by some people as a training ground for would-be illegal immigrants.
But, he says, the purpose is to pay homage to those who must leave Mexico to earn money for their families, and, above all, to generate more employment so the rest of the community can stay put.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0221/p01s04-woam.html?s=u
WhiteHouse Website Is Scrubbing Embarrassing Interviews
http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1345
via Unknown News
~Witness the unmaking of history! Pssst... try the Wayback Machine.
>update: How to Reconstruct the Missing White House Documents | Unbossed
Radio Station Cries 'Enough'
-- Won't Quote From Certain News Stories Relying on Unnamed Officials
NEW YORK After the latest widely-publicized stories in national newspapers about weapons from Iran allegedly killing Americans in Iraq -- based completely on unnamed sources -- at least one smaller news outlet has had enough of it.
The news director of the public radio station in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has directed his staff to "ignore national stories quoting unnamed sources."
~Note public radio.
Going to Canada? Check your past
Visitors with minor criminal records turned back at border
The Smart Border Action Plan...combines Canadian intelligence with extensive U.S. Homeland Security information. The partnership began in 2002, but it wasn't until recently that the system was refined.
"They can call up anything that your state trooper in Iowa can." says
(Canadian attorney David Lesperance, an expert on customs and immigration)
story with links to info on border crossing | SF Gate
via Unknown News
Tea Birds
Tea lovers! Looking for serious tea discussion, tea reviews, tea recommendations, etc......? Well, you've come to the wrong place.
Looking for oodles of pictures of beautiful girls and women sipping Oolong and Darjeeling?? Well then: Step right in!!
>for example
more photos http://teabirds.blogspot.com/
~Today I learned thanks to the Urban Dictionary that a tea bird is not the same as a t-girl and t-baggin is not something usually done in a tea or coffee shop.
Not that Innocent: The discursive construction of girls' sexuality in Dolly magazine
Thesis: Angela Pyke; Institution University of Canterbury (NZ) 2006
Abstract: This study examines the discursive construction of girls’ sexuality in the teen magazine, Dolly. It uses Dolly to illustrate the ambiguity surrounding girls’ sexuality in the media which render it simultaneously problematic and a source of entertainment. This focus was inspired by recent publicity surrounding teen sexual practices in New Zealand, where various media and governmental debates have rendered teen, and in particular girls’ sexuality a “sex crisis” (The New Zealand Listener: 14-20 May 2005) with which New Zealand is faced. ... The often contradictory discourses upon which this study focuses are confession, victimisation, epidemic, medicine, desire and girl power. The identities constructed are equally contradictory and include a naïve, knowledgeable, deviant or normal but always heterosexually desiring and desirable reader. In general, the study provides an insight into the ambiguity surrounding girls’ sexuality in popular culture, and into the potential implications of this on girls’ sexual, personal and social development and identity.
link to thesis (pdf): http://digital-library.canterbury.ac.nz/data/collection3/etd/adt-NZCU20060802.141328/
via GUS
Anti-terrorism sensor (System) heading to Memphis
The Department of Energy lab and commercial partner Cadre 5 demonstrated...a portable sensor and video system operated from a small self-contained trailer that can secure a 10-square-mile area.
In the event of a dirty bomb or industrial accident, the system can combine information about winds and weather to project which way the chemical or radioactive plume is headed so populations at greatest risk can be warned and evacuated.
A prototype system, named SNAPS for Sensor Network Area Protection System, has been in operation since last year in Washington, D.C.
Federal Homeland Security grants will cover the $600,000 cost, officials said.
The Memphis system will have five gamma-ray radiation sensors, five video cameras and eight chemical sensors sniffing for such things as ammonia, cyanide and chlorine. The sensors and cameras are mounted on portable battery-powered towers and linked wirelessly.
"Obviously we can't deploy this type of technology at every site," said Capt. Dale Lane with the Shelby County Sheriff's Office. "This will be deployed for specific threats or to certain venues or around large crowds.
Memphis, Tennessee... has been at the top of the national homeland security watch list for some time because of the large chemical loading and transfer operations at the Port of Memphis on the Mississippi River.
"A terrorist doesn't need a bomb" to wreak havoc in Memphis, (Rich) Stouder (director of technology development and deployment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory) said. "He doesn't need anything but a .30-06 (shotgun) and he can create a weapon of mass destruction."
The port already has five permanently installed sensors and video systems. The mobile detectors will link into that system, giving downtown emergency personnel an integrated picture for directing their response.
We think that every city of any size should have one of these things," said Steve Hicks, Cadre5 president and CEO. "So we are going to start marketing it and promoting it that way."
Press release | Business Week
~The video cameras make sense for crowd control and in the event of a disaster would allow first responders from a safe distance to see how many bodies are laying around.
However, I'm don't understand the advantage of a portable system with gamma and chemical sensors.
One would think Memphis, given its vulnerablity to shot gun blasts, would already have chemical "sniffers" permanently in place all over the city to guage which way their industries' toxic winds are blowing. As for gamma sensors, now that everybody knows about 'dirty bombs', how could a mayor worthy of his office not insist that his city be protected 24/7 with radiation detectors?
It looks like Cadre5 is taking advantage of Homeland Security's inability to fund the infrastructure necessary for a coordinated anti-terrorism response.
As for Cadre5's 'small self-contained trailer', who volunteers to sit inside at ground zero and monitor these systems? Is the occupant of the trailer protected from gamma radiation by lead-lined walls, with her own hazmat suit and air supply in case of a chemical leak or attack? Is he or she armed and trained to resist intruders? Or is the trailer nothing but equipment, with the human operators miles away?
February 27, 2007
Interview: Chalmers Johnson
“Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic"
In his new book, CIA analyst, distinguished scholar, and best-selling author Chalmers Johnson argues that US military and economic overreach may actually lead to the nation's collapse as a constitutional republic. It's the last volume in his Blowback trilogy, following the best-selling "Blowback" and "The Sorrows of Empire." In those two, Johnson argued American clandestine and military activity has led to un-intended, but direct disaster here in the United States.
Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3
Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream Read Transcript
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/27/1454229
also: 737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire
By Chalmers Johnson, Metropolitan Books. Posted February 19, 2007.
With more than 2,500,000 U.S. personnel serving across the planet and military bases spread across each continent, it's time to face up to the fact that our American democracy has spawned a global empire.
excerpted from Chalmers Johnson's new book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic": http://www.alternet.org/story/47998
Haute Couture
A model for Jeremy Scott in 2006. Scott is making a comeback to Paris with his autumn-winter collection after deserting the French capital for Los Angeles and New York following his return to his homeland in 2001.(AFP) @
~An anonymous model wearing a landmark brassiere and a columned bodice. One might think fashion designers would incorporate more landmarks and architectural structures into their clothing (and hairstyles).
We don't do that here
Revellers look at a float of U.S. President George W. Bush getting spanked by the Statue of Liberty as they celebrate the traditional Rose Monday street carnival parade in Mainz February 19, 2007. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach (GERMANY)
>more Rose Monday Parade Photos http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=rose+monday+mainz&c=news_photos
~We Americans don't permit such humorous (or threatening) caricatures of our presidents for public ridicule during tax funded festivals?
The 50 Craziest Rock Stars Ever
http://www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?ID=2511
~I'm glad to hear there are still jobs to be had that don't require pissing in a cup.
Ad: Havidol (avafynetyme HCL)
When More is Not Enough
HAVIDOL is for the treatment of Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD). It is the only known medication available for this newly recognized disorder.
by way of Bifurcated Rivets
Darwin Dating
Online dating for beautiful people
Is Glen Gross or Gorgeous?
Should we let Glen join? [Voting Link]
1 2 3 4 5
~Why would a specimen like Glen need to go online to find suitable sex partners? Something ain't right.
Study: College Students More Narcissistic
(Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University)...and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.
Narcissism can have benefits, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, suggesting it could be useful in meeting new people "or auditioning on 'American Idol.'"
"Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism," Twenge said. "By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube."
Hanady Kader, a University of Washington senior... is dismayed by the competitiveness of some students who seem prematurely focused on career status.
"We're encouraged a lot to be individuals and go out there and do what you want, and nobody should stand in your way," Kader said. "I can see goals and ambitions getting in the way of other things like relationships."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070227/self-centered-students
thanks Conscientious
~"What do we want!?" "None of your business, losers!"
"When do we want it!?" "You're killing my buzz, blocking my view and breathing my air. Who are you people?"
(I've a "fetish" for narcissists. I like to see that rare look on their faces when something happens that makes them almost understand they might not be the center of the universe. Those moments are sometimes worth the exhaustion one always feels before, (during) and after spending time with them.
It's like seeing the sun's corona during an eclipse.)
An Eclipse from Mir
The Mir space station sent back this amazing image of an eclipse's shadow racing across Earth. Image courtesy of: NASA @
[photo not with above link]
Jolie Adds Glamour to the Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations...decided... to accept the 32-year-old to be considered for a special five-year term designed to "nurture the next generation of foreign policy makers".
~Now that's hot.
Travel firm offers trips to CIA prison that Polish authorities deny exists
"...giving tourists a chance to follow in the footsteps of the CIA."
Visitors will be able to cycle and canoe near the Polish intelligence service's training centre at Stare Kiejkuty in the northern Mazuria region, and the nearby Szymany airport, Joanna Sobieska of Szarpie Travel was quoted as saying by the PAP news agency
A report approved last week by the European Parliament alleged that a host of European Union member states and several other countries had turned a blind eye to or even facilitated covert US flights. ...but an amendment to the study said there was insufficient proof.
Poland was singled out for its "flagrant" lack of cooperation with the parliamentary investigation, which began in 2005.
press release via News of the Weird
~Terrorism tourism.
Re: "the largest ever global survey of sexual kinks"
Researchers from the University of Bologna found that, among sexual preferences for body parts, feet and toes were the most popular, with 47 per cent of those sampled preferring them. They also found that, when it came to objects associated with the body, shoes, boots and other footwear scored 64 per cent.
The survey, based on the views of men and women, also revealed some of the more obscure objects of affection. These included 150 people with a penchant for hearing aids, and two whose hearts go into overdrive thinking about pacemakers.
Some 12 per cent were turned on by underwear, 9 per cent by coats, body fluids and body size, 7 per cent by hair, 5 per cent by muscles, and 4 per cent by genitals and body modifications such as tattooing.
Three per cent cent went for navels, ethnicity and breasts, and 2 per cent for legs, buttocks, mouths, lips and teeth.
The lowest scores went to stethoscopes, wristwatches, bracelets, nappies and catheters. Body hair, nails, noses, ears, neck and body odour all scored less than 1 per cent.
The researchers, whose work will appear in The International Journal of Impotence Research, say little is known about fetishes, and that most existing information has been based on clinical cases with psychiatric patients, sex offenders and people in therapy. The aim of their study, they say, was to survey sexual preferences in a more general population.
"In everyday usage, fetish refers to sexually arousing stimuli that would not meet psychiatric criteria for a diagnosis of fetishism. In many cases, they may simply enhance sexual interest or satisfaction rather than being necessary for it," say the researchers.
The scientists monitored activity in discussion groups on the internet that have up to 150,000 members dedicated to fetishes, although the number of people surveyed was probably no more than 5,000.
press release | Independent
from News of the Weird
~Who knew that shoes has such a large following?
I always thought shoe fetishists primarily came from economically privileged families (and the same could be said about internet users.)
It's odd what one believes about the behavior of others.
Abstract: ASSESSING THE CUTENESS OF CHILDREN:
SIGNIFICANT FACTORS AND GENDER DIFFERENCES.
By: Koyama, Reiko; Takahashi, Yuwen; Mori, Kazuo. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 2006, Vol. 34 Issue 9, p1087-1099
A newly developed questionnaire revealed that there are four factors in adults' perception of children's cuteness: childlike behavior, children's imitation of adults, adults' protective feeling toward children, and children's physical attributes. Eighty-four childless undergraduates and 72 adults with at least one child watched a film of a five-year-old boy and girl dressed either in boyish clothes or girlish, and then assessed their cuteness using the questionnaire. The results showed that participants rated equally their feeling of children's cuteness regardless of having or not having their own children. Among the four factors of cuteness, childlike behavior seemed to operate most strongly.
by way of Growing Up Sexually
~Diederik notes "...the authors discuss: "little has been discovered about whether the assessment of children’s cuteness is relatively similar across cultures or not. An exhaustive database search (Koyama & Mori, 2002) failed to find any cross-cultural comparisons concerning children’s cuteness. To answer this question, it is necessary to replicate similar research in a variety of cultures." (fulltext from EBSCOHOST)
[illus. google: kawaii\ not from above links]
Art Exhibit: Shared Women
New Girls Network
There are a few important codes of ethics in the contemporary art world. They tend to go unspoken, but everyone knows them. Among these are the edicts that you shouldn't curate your own work, and you should be very careful about curating the work of close friends and partners, past or present. Shared Women, a major group exhibition opening this Wednesday at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), kicks those rules to the curb. There is certainly a tongue-in-cheek element to this organizing principle, as manifest in curators A.L. Steiner, Emily Roysdon, and Eve Fowler's description of Shared Women as 'an exhibition that is dependent on cronyism, feminism, and nepotism.' While this type of insider trading has gone a long way in establishing the members of many an 'old boys network,' the practice's recontextualization from a feminist perspective formulates what the organizers call a 'dirty commerce' which is truly predicated on collaboration, support, and the constructive critique necessary for growth in the art world.Needless to say, the esteemed curators included themselves in this show, along with several strongly emerging artists, including Amy Adler, Chicks On Speed, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, JD Samson, K8 Hardy, Kathe Burkhart, Leidy Churchman, Stanya Kahn & Harry Dodge, Tara Mateik, Ulrike Mueller, and others--many of whom take up extant tools, ideologies, and objects in new, media-specific ways. The show opens with a series of performances and 'interactive opportunities,' and stays up through April 8. -- by Marisa Olson | @ Rhizome
LACE: http://www.artleak.org/
~If you can't help your friends, who can you help? Or... it's not who you blow, it's who you know.
February 26, 2007
TV: Dirty Jobs Fansite
forums: http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/cfrm/f/5141981108
~People think (and talk) more about their jobs then the media would have you believe.
[photo of Mike Rowe via google: "dirty jobs"]
Lab Workers Exposed to Plutonium
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Los Alamos National Laboratory has suspended the handling of plutonium in gloveboxes.
A glovebox is a sealed workspace that allows lab workers to handle radioactive materials safely from a separate area.
The suspension of the work comes after two lab workers were exposed to plutonium through cuts they suffered in separate accidents while working in gloveboxes last month.
Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said the amount of plutonium was relatively small.
But he said the seriousness of the accidents is associated with the exposure to open wounds.
Roark said both workers are responding well to therapies.
Lab managers were informed of the incidents Jan. 25 and immediately suspended handling plutonium in gloveboxes pending a full review, he added.
Posted: 2/20/2007 10:22:00 AM Source: AP @ | KRQE News
~Is there's a law that requires nuclear facilities to make public reports of accidents involving workers exposed to radioactive materials within thirty days of the incident? A law which also requires them not to report the names of the people poisoned?
[glovebox photo not from above]
~I think I'll write the Dirty Jobs guy (on the Discovery Channel) and suggest he try his hand at working a glovebox someplace. I wonder how many globebox jobs there are in the US?
>not so related: Terra's Glovebox Galleries:http://terrauniversal.com/products/gloveboxes/gallery_gbx/gloveboxgall1.shtml
Motivators: Transformation
from http://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/20061221191040.aspx
Blog: Russophobe
http://russophobe.blogspot.com/
~Russia's like any European country except it has a really large backyard.
KGB Then; FSB Now--Yevgenia Albats
>wiki
"Russia has one FSB-ist for every 297 citizens", whereas "the Soviet Union had one KGB officer for every 428 citizens." 7 (Symposium: When an Evil Empire Returns, interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, R. James Woolsey, Jr., Yuri Yarim-Agaev, and Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, FrontPageMagazine.com June 23, 2006.)
She (Yevgenia Albats) described the KGB as a leading political force, rather than a security organization, whose leaders, including Lavrenty Beria, Yuri Andropov, and Vladimir Kryuchkov, have always struggled for the power with the Communist Party and manipulated the communist leaders. Moreover, FSB has formal membership, military discipline, an extensive network of civilian informants [8], hardcore ideology of Russian nationalism, and support of population (according to Bashkirov and Company, 60% of Russians trust FSB [9]), which made it an extremely effective totalitarian party [10]
from wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgenia_Albats
~Right now there're some 2 million men, women and children in America's prisons and 7 million others "in the system". Unlike the Russians aren't we lucky that our secret federal security agencies, as well as our federal, state and local law enforcement bureacracies have no interest in wielding political power? Imagine what might happen to American democracy if our security forces found common ground upon which to organize?
[photo not with above]
Who's killing Putin's enemies?
Since 1999, when Vladimir Putin, a career KGB officer, was, in effect, anointed as president by Boris Yeltsin, 13 journalists have been murdered in Russia. Nearly all the deaths took place in strange circumstances, and none of them has been successfully investigated or prosecuted.
Last July... the duma passed a law, introduced by the Kremlin, to permit the assassination of 'enemies of the Russian regime' abroad. For people like Boris Berezovsky, whose hatred for Putin has become an obsession, the new law explained everything.
+
...when Russia's young democrats jettisoned the rules of democracy they also forfeited their independence. That made what came next for the media, and for Russia, possible - perhaps even inevitable.
(After) the 1996 election...the authorities understood... mass media could very easily be manipulated to achieve any goal. Whether the Kremlin needed to raise the rating of a president or bring down an opponent or conduct an operation to destroy a business, or a man, the media could do the job. Once the Kremlin understood that it could use journalists as instruments of its will, and saw that journalists would go along, everything that happened in the Putin era was, sadly, quite logical.'
+
The Putin government has made a clever calculation: a few newspapers, with tiny elite audiences, can publish highly critical investigations and editorials as long as that reporting and criticism stays absolutely disconnected from television. (And as long as their reporters keep out of Chechnya.)
Anna Politkovskaya began writing about the war in 1999, after the rules of press freedom changed, and she violated those rules every time she went to work. Not long before her death she wrote, 'I will not go into the ... joys of the path I have chosen - the poisoning, the arrests, the threats in letters and over the internet, the telephoned death threats, the weekly summons to the prosecutor general's office to sign statements about practically every article I write (the first question being, "How and where did you obtain this information?"). Of course I don't like the constant derisive articles about me that appear in other newspapers and on websites presenting me as the madwoman of Moscow. I find it disgusting to live this way. I would like a bit more understanding.' The fact that Novaya Gazeta continued to exist says more about the paper's minimal impact than about its openness.
+
'I don't know of a single case in the past six years when the duma voted against any presidential initiative,' Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the last liberal legislators willing to speak critically and publicly, told me. 'I also don't know of any case where the duma adopted an initiative that came from the regions. One man makes all the rules in Russia now, and the duma has become like a new Supreme Soviet.'
'Today, it is ridiculous to remember,' (Fyodor) Lukyanov (the editor of Russia in Global Affairs) said, 'but through much of the Nineties economic decisions in Russia could be taken only after consultation with the IMF and sometimes after the approval of the American Embassy in Moscow. Russia was weak. Russia didn't know what to do. And today's greed is a reaction to all of that. To poverty and humiliation. Our official ideology is to make more money.'
'Here we have this question of freedom or wealth,' Aleksei Venediktov, who runs the radio station Echo of Moscow, told me. It's the one remaining station in the capital that broadcasts truthful, and even combative, news reports and live call-in shows - a genre that has disappeared from Russian television. 'People chose wealth. They do not understand that freedom is a necessary condition for preserving the wealth and security that they have come to value. To be engaged in honest reporting about delicate subjects like corruption or to travel to Chechnya is too dangerous. People don't want it, they don't ask for it, and they really don't understand that they need it.'
+
'I have wondered a great deal about why I am so intolerant of Putin,' Politkovskaya wrote. 'Quite simply, I am a 45-year-old Muscovite who observed the Soviet Union at its most disgraceful in the Seventies and Eighties ... Putin has, by chance, gotten his hands on enormous power and has used it to catastrophic effect. I dislike him because he does not like people. He despises us. He sees us as a means to his ends, a means for the achievement and retention of personal power, no more than that. Accordingly, he believes he can do anything he likes with us, play with us as he sees fit, destroy us as he sees fit. We are nobody, while he whom chance has enabled to clamber to the top of the pile is today Tsar and God. In Russia we have had leaders with this outlook before. It led to tragedy, to bloodshed on a vast scale, to civil wars.' For her part, she said, 'I want no more of that.'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2019157,00.html by Michael Specter | Guardian
thanks Conscientious
~A story about people on the other side of the world who have nothing in common with us.
Giant Oil Man statue, AKA "Golden Boy," the "Golden Driller," or "Larry." Tulsa Oklahoma @
[photo via google: oil man\ not with article]
~Zoom, zoom, zoom.
African Kings
Several African countries have had monarchies in the context of the modern nation-state.
for example
EL HADJ MAMADOU KABIR USMAN; Emir of Katsina, Nigeria
more photos: http://neoncobra.blogspot.com/2006/12/african-kings.html
by way of Aberrant News
~I've always wanted my own retinue but never a posse. Go figure.
Recon Planes vs. I.E.D.s
Since the Iraq insurgency began, the U.S. Air Force has been looking for ways to use its planes to fight roadside bombs. Electronic warriors like the EC-130H Compass Call jam frequencies used to set off explosives. Drones patrol highways, looking for new, suspicious mounds along the road. Sometimes they even take out the bomb-planters.
Inside Defense reveals another Air Force tactic: Using ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) aircraft to help...round up insurgent cells believed to manufacture lethal improvised explosive devices."
Military officials working backward using surveillance video...
You can have a security camera in the sky,” he (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), Lt. Col. Clint Hinote) said. “We actually have aircraft that have that capability of just taking shots of what’s going on.”
After IEDs detonate in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, Air Force ISR officials begin marking tapes of radar sweeps in an attempt to pinpoint the explosion, he said. They then essentially rewind the tapes, trying to discover any movements in the specific area prior to the blast.
Maybe you can find the car that was involved and backtrack it to a certain house,” ...That’s actually led to a couple of good successes where we’ve rounded up some IED cells,” ...
"The ultimate goal is to track the IED maker to a bomb-making equipment storage location -- “and then even further back,” Hinote said.
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003016.html (Nov. 29, '06)
Colour sensor breath test can detect lung cancer
with a colorimetric sensor array
...with "moderate accuracy" even in the early stages, reveals research published ahead of print in Thorax.
Metabolic changes in lung cancer cells cause changes in the production and processing of volatile organic compounds, which are then breathed out
Other approaches to breath testing have been used, say the authors. This includes gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, which requires a great deal of expertise to use and is very expensive.
Ultimately, this line of investigation could lead to an inexpensive, non-invasive screening or diagnostic test for lung cancer," they conclude.
press release | EurekAlert
February 25, 2007
Cell Screens: Today's Mini Billboard
"We're calling the phone 'the brand in your hand' -- you're never more than a foot away from it, 24 hours a day," said Fareena Sultan, associate professor of marketing at Northeastern University's College of Business Administration. The challenge, Sultan said, will be to produce an advertisement for the phone "that excites the person holding it."
"The big question is: Are users going to find it acceptable to see advertisements and pay for service, too?" [said Steve Krom, vice president and general manager for Cingular in New England.]
The Federal Communications Commission prohibits companies from sending unwanted spam to wireless devices, and telemarketers are prohibited from auto-dialing cell phone numbers.
Eventually, a business model could evolve in which consumers opt in to see ads every time they open their phone, but get a discount on content or services, [Roger] Entner [analyst at Ovum] said. The cell phone could develop into a medium supported by ads and subscriber fees, like cable television.
But mobile ad spending is a tiny fraction of marketing campaigns today. Last year, companies spent $421 million, or 2.6 percent of total online ad spending, on mobile campaigns in the United States, according to research firm eMarketer Inc.
"When you have 220 million-plus people with a mobile phone, it's a wake-up call to advertisers that this is a significant way of reaching eyeballs."
Marketers think the mobile ad channel may be a good way to catch the attention of 18- to 34-year-olds who eschew traditional media channels...
But to be successful rather than annoying, the ads have to be targeted, relevant and even cool.
Such companies are still experimenting -- figuring out how to tap the potential of the mobile marketing ecosystem without starting a backlash.
"It's a very, very private space. People have a tremendous emotional attachment; we've got to be really careful," Sultan said. "If you think spam is bad, it's really, really bad on your cell phone."
complete press release http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070222/BIZ04/702220343/1013
QueerSilents
"...which perhaps might indicate something of an interest in queer silent cinema on your part."
~The lack of content on this site is another way of saying "at this time in history it's enough to consider the idea of a queer silent cinema. We don't want to frighten the horses."?
ArchiviaNet: Photographs
>search Library & Archives of Canada Photographs
>for example from keyword "camera":
Two children, one with a small bellows camera. Possibly John and Helen Breen. , ca. 1912 / Toronto, Ont. (?) — 1 item — 9.1 x 15 cm
Search the Database: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/02011502_e.html
(click the box re: Descriptions with a digitized image)
Cluster Bombs
Cluster bombs have been used over the last 60 years in about 17 countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
During the war against Iraq in 1991, Iraqi soldiers called this weapon “steel rain”.
The submunitions are designed to explode on impact, which differentiates them from antipersonnel mines, which are designed to be activated by the victim.
However, when cluster bombs fail to explode as expected, they remain hazardous and will explode when touched or disturbed.
http://www.handicap-international.org.uk/page_347.php
First Global Report on Cluster Munitions:
http://www.handicap-international.org.uk/page_597.php
>related: 46 of 49 Nations OK Ban on Cluster Bombs
OSLO, Norway (AP) - Forty-six nations adopted a declaration Friday calling for a 2008 treaty banning cluster bombs, saying the weapons kill and maim long after conflicts end and inflict ``unacceptable harm'' on civilians, particularly children.
Some key arms makers - including the U.S., Russia, Israel and China - snubbed the conference of 49 nations. Of those attending, Poland, Romania and Japan did not approve the final text.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6435402,00.html
>also: On Sept 6, 2006 Feinsten Amendment 4882 was defeated:
Comment: The bill was " To protect civilian lives from unexploded cluster munitions." Voting Nope, don't protect civilians, were: Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Joseph Biden, Senator Evan Bayh, Senator Chris Dodd, Senator Daniel Inouye, Senator Mary Landrieu, Senator Frank Lautenberg, Senator Joe Lieberman, Senator Blanche Lincoln, Senator Joseph Schumer, Senator Jay Rockefeller, Senator Ben Nelson, Senator Bill Nelson, Senator Mark Pryor, Senator Ken Salazar. All the other Democrats, including Kerry and Obama voted FOR the resolution. All the Republicans voted against it with the Democrats listed above.
archived & comments | Unknown News
Art: Mona Higuchi
>for example
Memoria, outdoor installation, Dead Horse Ranch State Park, Cottonwood, AZ, Verde River Days, 1999
The ground is covered with small river rocks. 800 mirrors (1 3/8" square) mounted on 1/8" wood dowels are randomly placed a couple of feet apart. Copyright ©2006 Mona Higuchi. more photos of Memoria
Mona Higuchi is an installation artist. She has been creating site-specific work since 1988. Many of her artworks have focused on human rights issues and historical events, such as the Japanese American Internment, Kristallnacht, the Relocation of the Aleuts in WWII, and the Disappeared in Central and South America. The work of this Asian American artist has been exhibited in the United States, Asia, and Europe. She has collaborated with Richard Lerman, sound and video artist, on many projects. She is currently living in Phoenix, AZ.
more projects: http://www.monahiguchi.com/projects
February 24, 2007
Teacher Convicted in Porn Case
WINDHAM, Conn. (AP) - Until recently, Julie Amero says, she lived the quiet life of a small-town substitute teacher, with little knowledge of computers and even less about porn.
Now she is in the middle of a criminal case that hinges on the intricacies of both, and it could put her behind bars for up to 40 years.
She was convicted last month of exposing seventh-grade students to pornography on her classroom computer. She contended the images were inadvertently thrust onto the screen by pornographers' unseen spyware and adware programs.
Several students testified that they saw pictures of naked men and women, including at least one image a couple having oral sex.
Prosecutor David Smith contended at Amero's three-day trial that she actually clicked on graphic Web sites.
The defense argued that the images were caused by adware and spyware - programs that are often secretly planted on computers by Internet businesses to track users' browsing habits. They can generate pop-up ads - in some cases, pornographic ones.
"What is extraordinary is the prosecution admitted there was no search made for spyware - an incredible blunder akin to not checking for fingerprints at a crime scene," Alex Eckelberry, president of a Florida software company, wrote recently in the local newspaper. "When a pop-up occurs on a computer, it will get shown as a visited Web site, and no 'physical click' is necessary."
Smith, the prosecutor, would not say what he plans to recommend when Amero is sentenced March 2. John Newsone, a defense attorney in Norwich familiar with the case, said Amero might be spared prison or face perhaps a year to 18 months.
Principal Scott Fain said the computer lacked the latest firewall protection because a vendor's bill had gone unpaid. "I was shocked to see what made it through," he said.
story via Unknown News
~Diederik can't figure it out either: "I haven't had an unwanted popup for years using decent software. People who know so little of computers that they do have them, and people who dont know how to kill a "popup hell" when it occurs, should burn in hell. Poor little souls being exposed to oral copulation. All they wanted is hair styles. I also say: what's with people using MIE? Even tho it now has tabs, it still is damn slow and overrules user behavior wherever it is most annoying. And what's this order-from-above not to close the terminal "under any circumstance"? Load of crap if you ask me. You can at all times close off the monitor, but apparently people think that's 1 button for the entire "computer". My my what a world. D."
>from Jan 14 on Spitting Image Teacher Faces 40 Years for Porn in Classroom, Blames Adware
Gun remark makes outdoorsman an outcast
Criticism of hunters who use assault rifles puts writer’s career in jeopardy
"Excuse me, maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity," (Jim) Zumbo wrote in his blog on the Outdoor Life Web site. The Feb. 16 posting has since been taken down. "As hunters, we don't need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them. . . . I'll go so far as to call them 'terrorist' rifles."
Despite a profuse public apology and a vow to go hunting soon with an assault weapon, Zumbo's career appears to be over.
His top-rated weekly TV program on the Outdoor Channel, his longtime career with Outdoor Life magazine and his corporate ties to the biggest names in gunmaking, including Remington Arms Co., have been terminated or are on the ropes.
The NRA on Thursday pointed to the collapse of Zumbo's career as an example of what can happen to anyone, including a "fellow gun owner," who challenges the right of Americans to own or hunt with assault-style firearms.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17307316/?GT1=9033
~I'm reminded of this quote from George Carlin:
"I think these pipe-smokers oughta just move to the next level and go ahead and suck a dick. There's nothing wrong with suckin' dicks. Men do it, women do it; can't be all bad if everybody's doin' it. I say, Drop the pipe, and go to the dick! That's my advice. I'm here to help."
---from "Seven Things I'm Tired Of" in http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/carlin-brain.html (Brain Droppings)
I know it doesn't make sense, but I couldn't find any photos of men kissing, sucking or licking their assault rifles.
February 23, 2007
216 Million Americans Are Scientifically Illiterate
Part 1
This level of science illiteracy may explain why over 40 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution and about 20 percent, when asked if the earth orbits the sun or vice versa, say it’s the sun that does the orbiting--placing these people in the same camp as the Inquisition that punished Galileo almost 400 years ago. It also explains the extraordinary disconnect between scientists and much of the public over issues the scientists think were settled long ago...
article http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/duncan/17535/
thanks Joerg
TV: The Agency
The Agency is a fly-on-the-wall documentary that follows the staff of top modelling agency Wilhelmina Models, and provides a peep-hole into the catty world of modelling. Meow. There's lots of bitching, lots of back-stabbing and lots of models.
But the real stars of The Agency are not the fit models; it's the staff at Wilhelmina - the people behind the people with nice behinds.
In the series you'll get an insight into the often turbulent relationship between agents and their models. There are lots of big egos, bad tempers, demands and rudeness... and then there's the models!
more from MTV Presents: http://www.mtv.co.uk/channel/13022007/the_agency
>also:
Early in Tuesday's Episode 1, (Becky Southwick) lays into slacker model Chloe, who looks as though a stiff breeze could blow her all the way to the Hamptons.
Still, Becky deems her a veritable "Pillsbury Dough Boy."
"You've got fatter," Chloe is told. "And I've just said the f-word."
This leaves Chloe near tears, even though she knows how it goes.
"There's no feeling involved in this business," Chloe says matter-of-factly. But don't take it personally or you'll be crushed like a bug.
+
If big-time modeling really works this way, then The Agency might be doing a public service by shining a light on it. But it's more likely that Becky Southwick is a creature, if not a creation, of very selective editing. Surely she wouldn't agree that in real life she's little more than a banshee.
more press release by Ed Bark | TV Cocktail
EnglishRussia
...just because something cool happens daily on 1/6 of the earth's surface.
~You get the feeling those people over there read more than us? Even the made up stuff is different. Is it because they (must) rely less on tv, celebrities, movies and other mass media references?
thanks Conscientious
Art Exhibit: THE DISAPPEARED (LOS DESAPARECIDOS)
(The)...artists whose work is represented in the exhibition are Marcelo Brodsky , Luis Camnitzer , Arturo Duclos , Juan Manuel Echavarría , Antonio Frasconi , Nicolás Guagnini , Nelson Leirner, Sara Maneiro , Cildo Meireles , Oscar Muñoz , Ivan Navarro , Luis González Palma , Ana Tiscornia and Fernando Traverso . Also included is a collaborative installation Identity/Identidad by a collective of 13 Argentinean artists.
The range of visual languages -- drawings, prints, photographs, installations and mixed media -- incorporated in The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) frequently employs similar forms to evoke the presence of the missing person or persons. Bodies, faces, personal possessions and names, often methodically compiled and arranged, appear both boldly and subtly throughout the work in the exhibition. “Through their intense visual and emotional impact, these works communicate the unspeakable and reveal the artist’s assumed role of social responsibility towards ending the silence surrounding these extreme cases of human rights violations,” says Julián Zugazagoitia, Director of El Museo del Barrio.
photos and links to exhibiting artists: http://www.ndmoa.com/PastEx/Disappeared/index.html
El El Museo del Barrio: http://www.elmuseo.org/exhib.html
~How many years will pass before America's detainees in our War on Terror get their North Dakota and NY art exhibit? Which American artists might be asked to submit work? With (Muslim) artists from the detainees' countries?
>Amnesty USA reports http://www.amnestyusa.org/regions/americas/reports.do
Newswar: PBS
FRONTLINE Interviews: Transcripts or Watch Online
The battle between the White House and the national media is the battle over who controls the national agenda," says commentator Patrick Buchanan. Mark McKinnon, former media adviser to President George W. Bush, agrees: "The Washington press corps for years thought that unless you talked to The New York Times and CBS, that you weren't talking to the American public. Well, that's just not the case anymore." McKinnon feels that it is a White House prerogative to choose its own communications strategy: "Presidents … ought to determine who they want to talk to and when they want to talk to them," he says. But William Safire, author and former New York Times political columnist, fears that hostilities between the administration and the press could threaten the media's ability to hold government accountable. "
Drawing on more than 80 interviews with key figures in the print, broadcast and electronic media... FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman examines the challenges facing the mainstream news media, and the media's reaction.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/interviews/
via Secrecy News
1963: 11 Seconds in Dallas
Within hours of John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, the Kodak film exposed by Abraham Zapruder became the most important home movie ever made. The 26 seconds-long moving picture, it was thought, captured in full the shooting and death of a president. Or as Life magazine (which purchased the rights to the Zapruder film) put it in 1966, “Of all the witnesses to the tragedy, the only unimpeachable one is the 8-mm movie camera of Abraham Zapruder, which recorded the assassination in sequence.”
+
...Gerald Posner, in his 1993 book Case Closed, posited that the errant first shot was fired at Z 160, which put the entire shooting sequence at 8.4 seconds.8 In the 13 years since Posner’s book, several highly respected students of the assassination have weighed in with reputable analyses of the first shot’s timing. Their estimates lead to total elapsed times of around 8.8, 8.4, and 8.6 seconds.
As the timing of the first shot wanders, though, the Zapruder film begins to resemble a Rorschach test rather than a Rosetta stone. 9 More to the point, it turns out that all of these estimates, regardless of their underlying rationale, rest on a common and unexamined premise: that since the second and third shots were captured by the Zapruder film, the first one must have been, too.
We believe that is not the case.
complete article by Max Holland & Johann Rush with footnotes and links: http://hnn.us/articles/35445.html#
via Secrecy News
Audit: Anti-terror case data flawed
Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday.
Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine were either diminished or inflated. Only two of 26 sets of department data reported between 2001 and 2005 were accurate, the audit found.
The numbers, used to monitor the department's progress in battling terrorists, are reported to Congress and the public and help, in part, shape the department's budget.
Acording to the Audit...
_Charges against a marriage-broker for being paid to arrange six fraudulent marriages between Tunisians and U.S. citizens.
_Prosecution of a Mexican citizen who falsely identified himself as another person in a passport application.
_Charges against a suspect for dealing firearms without a license. The prosecutor handling the case told auditors it should not have been labeled as anti-terrorism.
story by By Lara Jakes Jordan AP via TruthOut
~ Did the Justice Dept. get "terrorism" convictions and create legal precedents with some of these cases? Are there "terrorists" now in prison based on their "flawed data"? Can these prisoners now appeal their convictions?
What's today's terror-alert level?
>related: This list with links to "Bush-Cheney Administration's Lies About Terrorism Arrests": http://www.unknownnews.org/070220-terrorstats.html
>not related:
"After viewing over 18 hours of surveillance camera tapes from a convenience store in Boston and a "Chadors & More!" shop in Amman, a Bureau sketch artist has generated the following composite of what a typical male from the Middle East looks like.."
http://www.bettybowers.com/fbi.html#
February 22, 2007
Fantasy Kits, Steve Meisel's "State of Emergency"
Obscene mannequins’. ‘Conceptual deaths’. The eroticisation of violence in the media landscape… the stunning ‘State of Emergency’ spread in the current Vogue Italia seems to come straight out of JG Ballard’s Atrocity Exhibition…
[excerpt]
Reframed as Art, the Vogue photographs would no doubt be described — in the all-too familiar terms of art-critical muzak — as ‘negotiating with ideas of violence/ terror/ etc.’ As high fashion, they meet instead with a type of liberal denunciation that is no less familiar. In the Guardian, Joanna Bourke complained that, ‘It is no coincidence that the security forces are shown to be protecting us from a person who is neither male nor obviously Muslim’. Would Bourke have preferred it, then, if the images did feature a Muslim man?
Bourke continues:
Instead, the terrorist threat is an unreal woman. In contrast to the security personnel depicted, she is placed beyond the realm of the human. Her skin is as plastic as a mannequin’s; her body is too perfect, even when grimacing in pain. When the model is depicted as the aggressor, she remains nothing more than the phallic dominatrix of many adolescent boys’ wet dreams. In both instances, the beauty of the photographs transforms acts of violence and humiliation into erotic possibilities.
more http://www.ballardian.com/fantasy-kits-steven-meisels-state-of-emergency/
by way of http://del.icio.us/consumptive
>State of Emergency linked via http://www.spitting-image.net/archives/005781.html
Blog Entry from Baghdad Burning
Friday, December 29, 2006
End of Another Year...
You know your country is in trouble when:
1. The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.
2. Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country.
3. The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.
4. The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.
5. An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'.
6. Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.
more by Girlblog from Iraq-5: http://southerncrossreview.org/51/girlblog-5.htm
Baghdad Burning's home: http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
Lesson Plan: Media Literacy
A Free and Open Press: Evaluating the Media
Grade level: 10-12
Subjects: U.S. Government, Civics, Media Literacy
[excerpt]
One critical area that media literacy education focuses on is the news and the role of the news media in a democratic society. This lesson will cover several key areas of media literacy: essential differences in news reporting among the different media; editorial choices in reporting the news and bias in reporting.
Students will:
Compare and critically evaluate the different media as sources of news;
Develop criteria for defining "news";
Experience the editorial process of selecting news stories;
Detect bias in news reporting
Recognize differences between straight news and editorials, and between reporting and analysis;
Examine the role of competition in news reporting;
Analyze the effects of media ownership on news reporting and analysis;
Organize information into a concise format;
Summarize the main points of an issue;
Communicate orally and in writing.
more: http://www.pbs.org/flashpointsusa/20030916/educators/lessonplan.html | PBS.org
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
Harvard University Library: The Social Museum Collection
>for example
@ (zoom)
Social Settlements: United States. Illinois. Chicago. Gads Hill Centre: Gads Hills Centre, Chicago, Ill.: "American Citizens of To-morrow." Bohemian-Polish Quarter. Unidentified Artist c. 1900
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/photos-social-museum.html
by way of Plep
What should I put in my spy kit?
http://ask.metafilter.com/57187/Spy-kit
Video: Mea Culpa (1981)
>also/more: http://bushofghosts.wmg.com/watch_video.php
wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Life_in_the_Bush_of_Ghosts_(album)
~I've had 'samples' of this album's samples looping in my head for days at a time. Especially from "Help Me Somebody" and "Quran".
February 21, 2007
India: Air Surveillance for Rail Tracks
Militants have planted several bombs on train tracks over the past few months, forcing Northeast Frontier Railway to suspend services occasionally...
A senior official said air surveillance has its “distinct advantages” and could go a long way in minimising the chance of sabotage. “Air surveillance may not actually lead to detection of bombs, but the watch from the skies will surely be a deterrent. At night, thermal-imaging technology can be used to detect abnormal movement of people on tracks,” he added.
Northeast Frontier Railway, which had suspended night trains for several weeks and blocked the Guwahati-Rangia section after receiving news of bombs being planted, has since restored “normal services”.
The army’s aviation wing uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), mostly along the Manipur-Myanmar border. In recent times, UAVs have been used during counter-insurgency operations along portions of the Indo-Bangladesh border.
Any UAV uses infrared sensors to detect movement on the ground.
However, the army officer said UAVs “may not be very helpful” in surveillance of rail tracks, especially in populated areas. “The sensors will detect any movement on the ground. This will mean a lot of unwanted information and selecting the bits that will be useful can take a lot of time.”
Air Marshal P.K. Barbora of Eastern Air Command, Shillong, said the IAF has equipment “to detect movement of people and map routes and vantage points, but no system to find bombs on rail tracks or other places through sensors”.
press release | The Telegraph Calcutta
Korean Police to Deploy Unmanned Aircraft to Gather Photographic Evidence
...against suspects during illegal protests, a police official said...
The new machines are based on military models currently in use abroad, but are adapted to meet local requirements, the official said.
The high-tech machine will incorporate an image detector allowing officers to effectively "see" the face of a person who is wearing a mask.
The initiative is expected to cost about 100 million won ($106,800).
Currently, police officers on the scene take photos of suspects, but the practice often agitates protestors.
Right now, the Los Angeles Police Department is operating a Sky Seer to monitor crime within the city. That UAV has an built-in global positioning system and can stay airborne for 70 minutes, flying at 48 kilometers per hour. Each unit costs $25,000-$30,000.
press release | Korea Times
Court: Detainees Can't Challenge Cases
Tuesday 20 February 2007 Washington - A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that foreign-born prisoners seized as potential terrorists and held in Guantanamo Bay may not challenge their detention in U.S. courts, a key victory for President Bush...
story by Hope Yen | AP via TruthOut
[2002(?) detainee photo not from above]
Discourse Analysis Means Doing Analysis:
A Critique Of Six Analytic Shortcomings
Abstract: A number of ways of treating talk and textual data are identified which fall short of discourse analysis. They are: (1) under-analysis through summary; (2) under-analysis through taking sides; (3) under-analysis through over-quotation or through isolated quotation; (4) the circular identification of discourses and mental constructs; (5) false survey; and (6) analysis that consists in simply spotting features. We show, by applying each of these to an extract from a recorded interview, that none of them actually analyse the data. We hope that illustrating shortcomings in this way will encourage further development of rigorous discourse analysis in social psychology.
article: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/v1/n1/a1/antaki2002002.html
by Charles Antaki, Michael Billig, Derek Edwards, Jonathan Potter
Discourse and Rhetoric Group, Department of Social Sciences Loughborough University
thanks Diederik
~Their way of doing analysis confuses me.
>maybe related: List of Cognitive Biases (wiki article)
~My head hurts.
[photo not from above links]
Blog Entry: State-of-the-Art Fairs
"...bio-powered, ecologically friendly, shiny white coupes on the one hand, hardcore military supplies on the other."
http://www.beikey.net/mrs-deane/?p=81
.jpg)
Lyric: Underneath the Arches
Underneath the Arches
I dream my dreams away.
Underneath the arches,
On cobblestones I lay.
Ev'ry night you'll find me,
Tired out and worn.
Happy when the daylight comes creeping,
Heralding the dawn.
Sleeping when it's raining,
And sleeping when it's fine,
I hear the trains rattling by above.
Pavement is my pillow,
No matter where I stray.
Underneath the Arches
I dream my dreams away.
(written by: Bud Flanagan - Joseph McCarthy 1932)
from Jill Daniel's Wartime Music Show
Gilbert & George
links to exhibition/movies/interview http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/archives/002524.html
Gilbert & George; Spit on piss, 1996
C-Print 226 x 191 cm
[via google]
Article: re "Online Disinhibition Effect"
~Q: What happens when our orbitofrontal cortex's "social scan" lacks real-time cues?
http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/archives/002526.html
>also Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior by DANIEL GOLEMAN | NYTimes (signin/password: unknown/unknown)
~A: We flame.
February 20, 2007
Fun in the Great Outdoors
Indiana Dunes State Park; Beach Parking Lot (west edge) 12/06
The Dunes is a landscape in some ways more dependent upon the wind then the seasons. There may be more storms during the winter, blowing harder(?) over a normally frozen lake and the leaves on the trees and bushes may lessen the impact of summer and fall thunderstorms but by and large the sand moves independent of the increase and decrease of the biomass, the comings and goings of humans. (It's a different melody.)
Here's a photoshop resized & filtered version of the above.
Southern California Nipple & Areola Correction
"Pick the Perfect Nipple" http://www.nipplerepair.com/nipple/
~In Southern California they know how to correct nipples.
Enemy
>a public service announcement
Taliban fighters are seen holding their weapons at a secret base in eastern Afghanistan in this February 3, 2007 file photo. Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are turning to sophisticated roadside bombs as they revert to classic guerrilla tactics against NATO, the alliance's top operational commander said on Tuesday. (Feb. 13) (REUTERS/Saeed Ali Achakzai | Yahoo
~Make no mistakes. Perhaps not the adversaries you face in your daily battles, nonetheless they are enemy. (An enemy? Our enemy?)
When I last had the flu, images of a microscopic, ragged, bearded band of tribesmen carrying the viral equivalent of kalishnokoffs and American-made mortars often came to my fevered mind.
Google Web Search: "armies at my feet"
>poem
Mosaic (Psalm 144) by Laurence Wieder
My fingers twang the bowstring.
Arrows flying from the tower
Land whole armies at my feet.
What is one human,
That God should know or care about him or his children?
complete poem/comments: http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2006/11/thursday_short_.html">
>related Psalm 144 | BibleGateway
[illus. google: psalm 144]
Google News Search: "battle for"
~Today there are more than 1,100 news articles collected by Google that contain the words battle-for nicole
As in "Battle for Anna Nicole Smith's Body".
Today and going back thirty days Google News links to more than 1,400 stories containing the words battle-for iraq
The exact phrase battle for has been used in more than 20,000 articles collected by Google in the past month from English language newspapers around the world.
[photo google: battle]
Hugh Symonds: The Landscape Lies Beneath the Picture
>for example
gallery http://hupix.net/pages.php?id=126
~You CAN get there from here.
February 19, 2007
Photography: Rachel Mozman
> from Costa del Este
http://www.rachellemozman.com/index.html
from Conscientious
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count: US Names
>by age and date
http://icasualties.org/oif/US_NAMES.aspx
Faces of the Fallen (Photo Gallery) http://projects.washingtonpost.com/fallen/
Military boots symbolize the 1,370 U.S. military deaths since the beginning of the Iraq War during a candlelight vigil outside the National City Christian Church in Washington, D.C. The vigil was meant to coincide with the (Bush 2004) inaugural celebrations.
[photo google @\ not with above link]
Blog: Inside Iraq
http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq/ | McClatchy Washington Bureau
~Ah journalists: you can't get them on the phone when you need them, you can't have newspapers without them.
Arms Sales Monitoring Project Issues
http://www.fas.org/asmp/campaigns/index.html
~Issues to think about after America wins the peace in our fight for Iraq.
Photography: Steve McCurry
http://www.stevemccurry.com/main.php
from Diederik
>wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_McCurry
>PDN Legends http://www.pdngallery.com/legends/mccurry/ (interview)
~Icons. I'ld like to see the polaroids and the out-takes from these photoshoots. They might show me something I don't already know about these people.
I'ld also like to see Steve McCurry photograph celebrities.
Ohio Paper Goes to Court Over Ban on Photos of Teen Defendant
The newspaper (The Columbus Dispatch) said (Judge Chris) Geer denied its request to photograph the plea hearing Friday for Elijah Nichols in Franklin County Juvenile Court because the boy's family didn't want him photographed.
Nichols admitted to juvenile delinquency by involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors accuse him of going through the pockets of Terry Ward, 43, after another teenager in a group of teens punched him to death Sept. 1.
story | AP via E&P
~The War at Home.
I'ld like to see the media bring back the 'perp walk' especially for police, politicians and other public officials convicted of crimes.
[photo google "perp walk"\ not above
(more "perp walk" image search results here)]
February 18, 2007
"Converting Satellite Technology Into A Useless Thing"?
...the possibility of military space technologies converting the boon of satellite technology into a useless thing by cramming the usable earth orbits into potential minefields of engineered and non-engineered destructive satellites...
from Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay's Book Review: Nemesis-The Last Days of The American Republic - Chalmers Johnson
>maybe related on Spitting Image Space Pearl Harbor? & Space Weather Tool...
[illus from google: space weapons large/url]
Hubris of Empire
Nemesis The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson
The litany of governmental misdeeds, ill-considered policies and ethical failures that makes up the bulk of the book may have a paralyzing effect on many readers, particularly given Johnson's frequent reminders as to how many of our government's most destructive activities lie beyond congressional oversight and are invisible to public scrutiny. (As he makes clear, not only do we not know what the CIA does, we don't even know how much money it spends doing it.)
book review | SFGate
Man's Body Found in Front of TV Year After Death
Television was still on, authorities say; body partially mummified
HAMPTON BAYS, N.Y.
Vincenzo Ricardo, 70, apparently died of natural causes...
“We never thought to check on him,” said neighbor Diane Devon.
item | MSNBC
~I wonder what channel he was watching? He probably didn't have cable tv.
Google News Search: Iraq Oil Fields
>Location: USA
~Today and going back thirty days Google News Search shows 565 articles from news sites within the USA that use the words iraq+oil+fields.
~War is over if you want it. (The Iraqi war is the most costly price subsidy ever?)
Between Barack and a Hard Place
"...Hillary, like Kerry, is set up as the DLC-acolyte candidate while Obama, like Dean, is set up as the antiwar candidate suggests a kind of permanent template for the Democratic primary process. Maybe soon the race for the Democratic primary will be like Everytown USA's annual high school production of A Streetcar Named Desire, where every year they find a new antiwar Blanche and a new pro-corporate Stanley. The faces are different, the lines are the same.
As far as political positioning goes, his strategy seems to be to appear as a sort of ideological Universalist, one who spends a great deal of rhetorical energy showing that he recognizes the validity of all points of view, and conversely emphasizes that when he does take hard positions on issues, he often does so reluctantly. He is a black man from Chicago who gets away with praising Ronald Reagan, which is not an easy task. His political ideal is basically a rehash of the Blair-Clinton "third way" deal, an amalgam of Kennedy, Reagan Clinton and the New Deal; he is aiming for the middle of the middle of the middle.
thanks Joerg
~It'll be interesting to hear Senator Obama's plans for ending Bush's War. Then if he's elected president imagine how quickly his own words will mock him.
Oves Cap
more images http://www.cervicalbarriers.org/information/images.cfm
from http://www.marquis.de/onlineshop/default.php?cPath=21_45_31_74
~Inhale
Little Grown Ups
>Japanese "low-teen" idols
"Which is the real lolita complex - idolizing young women as adult sexual objects or idolizing young women as childish sexual objects?"
blog entry/clips/comments http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/2007/02/little-grownups.html
The Twilight Players Hall of Fame
What moved and inspired us...
[excerpt}
In 1974 after watching The Lockers on 'Saturday Night Live', Thomas 'T-Bopper' Guzman-Sanchez was inspired to learn the dance. He went on to form the group 'Chain Reaction' with his younger brother Paul 'Coolpockets' Guzman-Sanchez, Mike 'Deuce' Donley and Bob 'Bosco' Winters. They were one of the first groups to dance both styles (locking and popping) CHAIN REACTION were famous for their intricate routines and double time style. The group also appeared in the movie' XANADU' it was the first time that Locking and Popping would feature in a major film production. In 1980 (the year MTV launched) Coolpockets featured in Rod Stuart's promo 'Young Turks', it went on to become the 1st to take the best music video of the year.
As the group developed, it was the unison routines and this clean Doubled Up style of Locking that set them apart.
http://www.twilightplayers.com/private/halloffame.htm
Video Search: YouTube, Sex Ed
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sex+ed
~A YouTube search for "clit popping" did not have the same percentage of relevant results, go figure.
>from the Urban Dictionary # 23 pop (FYI there's a lot of bs in the Urban Dictionary) YouTube search results popping
2007 in Spaceflight
This is a list of spaceflights to be launched in 2007. This list is incomplete... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_in_spaceflight
Imaging Sensor For GeoEye-1 Satellite
The GeoEye-1 satellite [GeoEye wiki] will be.. able to precisely locate an object to within three meters of its true location on the surface of the Earth without the use of ground control points.
The ITT electro-optical "camera" delivered to General Dynamics, includes the optical telescope assembly, the detectors and focal plane assembly, and the high-speed digital processing electronics.
Features include the following:
* 3 Camera Modes:
Simultaneous panchromatic and multispectral (pan-sharpened)
Panchromatic only [panchromatic wiki]
Multispectral only [multispectral image wiki]
* Unprecedented ground spatial resolution of 0.41-meter panchromatic and 1.65-meter multispectral
* Approximately 700,000 square kilometers of imagery collection potential per day in the panchromatic mode and 350,000 square kilometers in the multispectral mode
press release | SpaceRef.com
>related: National Geospatial Inytelligence Agency wiki Motto: "Know the Earth, Show the Way."
February 17, 2007
~Not a rebus. What do you call that other thing you can do with pictures?
Lyric/Video: Love is a Battlefield
"We are young! chunk-a-chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk"
complete lyric: http://www.poemhunter.com/song/love-is-a-battlefield/
~All the boy-watching girls in my town are singing this song.
Pat Benatar's video of the above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuOhUa5GxA0
ScanEagle to Hunt Snipers?
Boeing is to integrate Insitu's ScanEagle UAV with the SpotShotter ground-based acoustic gunfire detection system, for a four-month assessment by USAF security forces that could lead to deployment.
A commercial system used by police to detect and locate gunfire in cities, SpotShotter uses acoustic sensors to triangulate on gunshots. The wireless sensors can be worn by soldiers, attached to vehicles or fixed on buildings. Gunshot co-ordinates are then sent to the UAV, cueing its electro-optical or infrared camera to look for the sniper.
>related UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE BATTLELAB (Creech Air Force Base, Nev.) factsheet
[illus. google: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Center for Excellence/not from above links]
DiscoverTheNetworks.org
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/
~Hey we're lefties here! See map(s) (Wow!) Send money comrades.
[photo google: leftist\ not from above]
Never Too Young to Bleed
"Send This To Your Brigade"
"I don't think I can trust Shiite Muslims that celebrate Ashoura with defending women rights, gay rights, democracy or freedom. They'll have to stop cutting themselves like barbaric morons from the 4th century before there's a chance they'll reject intolerance, violence and hate."
more pictures of blood & barbarism: http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26165
thanks Diederik
February 16, 2007
Netdiver
"{Mission?}:
Devoted to tutoring, empowering and stimulating creativity as well as excellence in design projects by the international community involved in the design industry and beyond!
Feed your eyes!"
for example:
http://netdiver.net/imaginative/
http://netdiver.net/portfolios/
http://netdiver.net/photography/
~Eye candy.
Wireless Sensors Extend Internet's Reach
re the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, a UCLA-based consortium of six schools.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2866881&page=1
by way of & comments http://technocrat.net/d/2007/2/14/14885
Call for Papers: Collection on Online Pornography
Proposals are sought for a new edited collection on online pornography.
Although online pornography attracts a great deal of public attention
and is frequently the focus of moral, political and legal debate,
comparatively little attention has been paid to it by academics. This
is a glaring knowledge gap, particularly given the central role of
pornography in the development of new technologies and the rapid
expansion and development of online pornography. This collection
responds to the pressing need for academic work in this area.
Proposals are welcomed on, but not limited to, the following topics and areas:
Regulation, censorship and governance
The economics of online porn
Reviewing porn: industry publications, experts, communities, fans
Porn audiences
Porn and file sharing
Commercial porn sites
Celebrity sex tapes
Realcore ? amateur sex online
Alternative porn and subcultures
?Smart smut? ? online magazines and erotica
Pornstars online
Sex art, Slash fiction, Retro porn
Sexblogs
Porn and shock sites
Proposals of 200-250 words, accompanied by a biographical note of 100 words, should be sent to Feona Attwood at f.attwoodATshu.acDOTuk by March 30 2007.
| Netporn-l Digest, Vol 66, Issue 1
from Diederik
Instances of Use of U.S. Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2006
Introduction
The following list reviews hundreds of instances in which the United States has utilized military forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict to protect U.S. citizens or promote U.S. interests. The list does not include covert actions or numerous instances in which U.S. forces have been stationed abroad since World War II in occupation forces or for participation in mutual security organizations, base agreements, or routine military assistance or training operations. Because of differing judgments over the actions to be included, other lists may include more or fewer instances.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32170.pdf (42 pp) | Secrecy News
February 15, 2007
Michelin Man aka Bibendum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin#Bibendum
thanks Consumptive
~Imbibe
Fetish: Ballbody
($439 EUR)
From the fantastic SlinkySkin collection: inflatable ballbody, available in red or black, covers the upper body, arms and shoulders. Model also wears SS001 ballhood on her head. Please note that these items are, like most of our glued latex clothing items, made to order. They are not exchangeable and refundable.. item | Marquis.de
from Aberrant News
>also mask gallery
Artefact Festival 2007
about: http://www.artefact-festival.be/2007/index_en.php
installations & video (program): http://www.artefact-festival.be/2007/07_installaties_video_en.php?id=01
>for example
HOME MOVIE / DIVIDE / RECONSTRUCTION
JIM CAMPBELL (US)
For the past seven years, Jim Campbell has presented pixilated representations created with so few L.E.D.s (more than a thousand times fewer than the number of pixels on your computer screen) that a viewer should not be able to comprehend what they are seeing. And yet, because of the brainís ability to interpret abstract data and "fill in" the gaps in the information needed to create a complete idea, a viewer recognizes an image.
Campbell's is a unique and humanistic approach to information theory. He explores the distinction between the analogue world and its digital representation as a metaphor for the human ability for poetic understanding or "knowledge" as opposed to the mathematics of "data". In the recent 'Home Movie', Campbell abstracts the data even further while manipulating our voyeuristic tendencies by revealing information and at the same time obscuring it. The pixilated imagery is turned away from the viewer, toward the wall. There is no longer a visible "image", only the reflection of an image...@
>related http://www.jimcampbell.tv/index800.html
~
Court OKs Surreptitious GPS Tracking by Police
by way of Unknown News
Disposable Sensor Uses DNA to Detect Hazardous Uranium Ions
>catalytic DNA process
The sensor provides a fast, on-site test for assessing uranium contamination in the environment, and the effectiveness of remediation strategies, said Yi Lu, a chemistry professor at Illinois and senior author of a paper accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and posted on its Web site.
“A unique feature of our uranium sensor is that it contains a small piece of DNA..."
In 2000, Lu’s research group used the same catalytic DNA process to create a simple but effective lead sensor. “This latest success demonstrates that our methodology can be used to makecost-effective sensors for other hazardous metals, as well, with extremely high sensitivity and selectivity,” Lu said. “We can also construct sensor arrays that detect and quantify many metal ions simultaneously.”
~I can picture a time when people with allergies and chemical sensitivities will have their own personal DNA sensors which they'll be able to expose in unknown environments or before they step out of their hermetically sealed apartments to greet a polluted new day. These imaginary personal DNA sensors will help them choose specific medications to self-administer.
More likely disposable DNA sensors will be indispensable for fire, emergency, prison and hospital workers as well as for use by the military and customs.
AIDS Virus Weakness Detected
Scientists have captured an image of the AIDS virus in a biological handshake with the immune cells it attacks, and said on Wednesday they hope this can help lead to a better vaccine against the incurable disease.
They pinpointed a place on the outside of the human immunodeficiency virus that could be vulnerable to antibodies that could block it from infecting human cells.
The team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the NIH, made atomic-level images of the virus...
A 3-D X-ray crystallographic image showing the broadly neutralizing antibody b12 (green ribbon) in contact with a critical target (yellow) for vaccine developers on HIV-1 gp120. Scientists have captured an image of the AIDS virus in a biological handshake with the immune cells it attacks...
thanks Conscientious
~"Biological handshake": is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Dun-dun-dunnn. In 20 years AIDS will be like what malaria is...for those people who can afford the vaccine. Happy Valentine's Day Children and Grand-children!
Are there any new sexually transmitted diseases or syndromes that might compete with AIDS as a anaphrodisiac?
February 14, 2007
Blogging Sundance
http://www.bloggingsundance.com/
~I can't remember the last time I was at an event worthy of its own blog. Is Kinkos a place or an event?
DoD Adds "Credibility Assessment" to Polygraph Program
The Department of Defense has revised and supplemented its polygraph program to include non-polygraph techniques for detecting deception.
...which refers to "The multi-disciplinary field of existing as well as potential techniques and procedures to assess truthfulness that relies on physiological reactions and behavioral measures to test the agreement between an individual's memories and statements."
The rel