Spitting Image

Directory Listing: Brightbrown

From White Box to Inbox

On the last Friday of every month, archivist Jesse Aaron Cohen 'opens' a new email exhibition. The shows are delivered to subscribers' inboxes, in the form of thematized collections of digital images. (Below is the root directory for these images.) Cohen is based in New York and many of the shows in his series revolve around immigrants to the city and diaspora Jewish culture. The current one, number 28, is called 'Dr. Z's' and features scans of ads for 'health, beauty, and wellness products and practitioners as they appeared in programs from various Yiddish theaters in New York between 1890 and 1928.' The title is inspired by dermatologist Dr. Zizmor's (Dr. Z's) ubiquitous subway ads, as traced in the supplementary links included in the email. Each of the exhibitions features such extra info and is contextualized by a brief curatorial statement. Number 21 was simply called 'Myspace,' and the statement read, 'This exhibition features images found on the Myspace pages of ! US soldiers currently in Iraq. Click on the photo to view the profile.' Together, and without extra editorializing, the images painted a broader picture of the anxieties and banalities, of the soldier's daily life. Exhibition 4 ('Envelope Art') focused on mail, itself, and identified 'four disparate groups in which envelope art has thrived as a creative medium, namely: members of the US Armed Forces, Deadheads, incarcerated Americans, and video game enthusiasts.' Once again piecing together artifacts to make a thoughtful cultural statement, Cohen's musings might also apply to email art: 'If the medium is the message, then the message of envelope art seems to generally involve craft, dedication, boredom, and the desire to communicate personality with the recipient from afar.' - Marisa Olson*

from psyops

http://brightbrown.fastmail.fm/

*by way of Rhizome

RECENTLY TELEVISED SEXUAL PREDATORS

Wanted By the FBI

The following accused sexual predators were recently televised on "The Oprah Winfrey Show":

Get email updates when new sexual predator information is posted

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/profiled.htm

Overheard Starbuck

http://overheardstarbuck.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

Padilla & the Zucchini Prosecution

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04272007.html by Mike Whitney

~Read it and weep Homelanders. Another major terrorist attack on US soil and President Hilary will sign off on the arrests of dozens of Americans for "inchoate crimes" and by the end of the century & a few more attacks or rumors of attacks & whoever's President will have thousands of citizens in prison following the precedent set by Padilla's arrest and conviction.

Doesn't $3500 for a 'zucchini' sound like a drug transaction?

Does this writer think Padilla won't be convicted?
I think he'll get life in prison without parole and the only thing to prevent the Bushies from imposing the death penalty is that other doctors (then the two he saw during the past five years) would be required by law to examine Padilla and convinced to ignore the brain damage he suffered while being confined and tortured.

[photo from google: "hooded men"\ not above link]

American Environmental Photographs 1891-1936

Item Title
Prunus pumila holding [a] dune remnant, Miller, Indiana
Created/Published 1916-04-06

Subjects
United States--Indiana--Lake County
Erosion
Sand dunes
Plants
Botanical (scientific): Prunus pumila
Botanical (common): Great Lakes Sand Cherry
still image

Related Names
Photographer: Fuller, George D. (George Damon), 1869-1961
Medium Glass negatives, 12.6 x 17.6 cm

Digital Collection American Environmental Photographs
Reproduction Number AEP-INN141

Repository
University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center
Source Collection
University of Chicago Department of Botany Records

browse by state http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/ecology/aepgeo.html

collection home http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/ecology/index.html

~While glancing at the "Indiana-Lake County" photographs and reading their captions I realized most of these places aren't there anymore. The steel mills of Lake County Indiana in the past hundred years leveled miles of dunes, straightened rivers, cut woods and filled ponds and bogs.

I've seen and photographed prunus pumila at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore but I wasn't aware of the plant's name. Also I never pictured the plant "holding" the dune. I have pictured bulldozers, trucks, steam trains, cranes and horse drawn carts hauling away through the years whole dunes but before today the subtle machinations of roots, leaves and stems in the sun & wind on wet, dry and frozen sand had escaped my awareness.

Bumbling (Confessed Terrorist David) Hicks Not Dangerous

In a scathing critique, Hicks's US military prosecutors have privately described the convicted Australian as a man of "no personal courage or intellect" who rolled over as soon as he was questioned.
And they have undermined the Australian Government's portrayal of Hicks as a dangerous terrorist by admitting that his crimes were relatively minor compared with those of his fellow inmates at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"I think he read Soldier of Fortune magazine too many times," said John Altenburg, the top US official in the Office of Military Commissions from 2004 to last year, speaking publicly about Hicks for the first time.

The formerly private views of the Hicks prosecutors are revealed in a new book, Detainee 002 - The Case of David Hicks, by ABC journalist Leigh Sales.

Sales quotes another, unnamed, Hicks prosecutor, who had reviewed classified US intelligence reports..."Certainly he was a big talker but as far as I can tell, he never killed an American and never planned to," the prosecutor says. He said Hicks had "no personal courage or intellect. He would be a total liability on a proper operation; he can't keep his mouth shut. He talked from the second we caught him. We never had to use any techniques at all on him in Guantanamo - there was no need."

One Australian official said Hicks "talked to everybody ... ASIO, the AFP, the CIA, the FBI, M15, anybody who'd come in with a hamburger, he'd tell them whatever they wanted to know".

The new book...shows that, contrary to popular belief, Australian diplomats were working feverishly behind the scenes as early as 2003 to push the Americans to move faster on the Hicks case, but to no avail.
The prime culprit was the Pentagon which, through a mixture of incompetence and deliberate obstruction, ensured that the Hicks case proceeded at a snail's pace.
The book identifies US Vice-President Dick Cheney and former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the key powerbrokers who backed the Pentagon's intransigence in relation to the Guantanamo Bay inmates.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21634515-601,00.html

>Spitting Image posts for "david hicks"

The Real Mouse, Mouse

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gizmodo-lunch-special/the-real-mouse-mouse-255928.php

~There aren't many examples of taxidermy around here. (Too many recent, hunting-deprived superstitious immigrants?) You have to drive into Wisconsin about where the northern forest once stood or deep down into southern Illinois with its legendary 'coon, squirrel and pole-cat hunters to see taxidermy displayed in homes and bars.
Or visit Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

Hotdog: A Sex Doll for Dogs

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/hotdoll-the-sex-doll-for-dogs-253334.php

BBFC Game Research

The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) has done some games research - which is good, because they're some of the ones who grade videogames for age limits, putting those film-like stickers on them bearing guidance ages...

for example BBFCs "Recent Decisions" list

from http://www.wonderlandblog.com/wonderland/2007/04/bbfcs_game_rese.html w/more

Blog Entry: Plumplered

"i am sooo wiped.
got my lips re-plumpled today and even tho they aren't throbbing as bad as last time they hurt like hell! so i'm on 2x30mg codeine and sipping pink wine through a straw out of an antique glass urine specimen jar, lol..."

http://dreadberry.livejournal.com/265923.html

~This cheered me up. Thank you.

Chicago Landmarks

http://www.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/Index.html

Depression Among Retired NFL Players

University of Michigan Health System study is based on extensive survey

"...the prevalence of moderate to severe depression was nearly 15 percent, very similar to the prevalence in the general public. But the frequency with which the retired players reported problems with pain – nearly half the people in the study – puts them at significant additional risk for depression and associated difficulties...

press release | Eurekalert

~Note: nowhere in the abstract is there any mention of the average age of these retired NFL players. I'm guessing most of them are well under the age the US' Social Security Administration begins to pay out its retirement benefits.

I wonder how a similar study of players injured (i.e. 'retired') while playing college football might differ?
The earlier in life one's injured the less depression later in life? The less chronic pain?
Or since college athletes aren't 'encouraged' to play with injuries as many years as the pros before they're retired there's no basis for comparison between them & professional athletes.

(I love it that your sons want to play pro football.)

[photo via google\ not with above link]

Satellites shed light on global Warming

As climate change continues to make headlines across the world, participants at the 2007 Envisat Symposium this week are hearing how Earth observation satellites allow scientists to better understand the parameters involved in global warming and how this is impacting the planet.

article: http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMRLH12Z0F_planet_0.html

~Looks like the EU not the USA is interested in understanding global warming.

Book: Pink Box

Inside Japan's Sex Clubs by Joan Sinclair

some photos http://www.pinkboxjapan.com/index.html

about http://www.pinkboxjapan.com/about.html

Design: Ingenious Therapies

re: Just Hanging Around

A shoemaker has created bat-style boots to allow travellers to hang upside down on the London Underground.

*

Sky News reports, Dutch-born Eelko Moorer's footwear can latch on to hand strap rails inside Tube trains.
Mr Moorer, from east London, got his girlfriend Alice Wolff to try the boots out.
"We had a somewhat mixed reaction from other Tube travellers," he said. "Some people were surprised, others liked it and others were appalled."
The 32-year-old came up with the design while pondering how to liven up "boring and similar journeys".
"I like the idea of doing something that gives a person a sense of relief and can cheer up lives," he said.

press release | IOL

photo & more: http://www.designmuseumshop.org/design/page71446

Eelko Moorer's web-site http://www.eelkomoorer.com/

~I've don't think I ever lived in a place where affecting different postures could be liberating. (See "Bird People" at Moorer's site) I imagine knowledge of such a freedom has to do with population density per square mile. Perhaps I've lived too long out-of-the-line-of-sight of neighboring windows and the eyes of others.

(South Africa) Sex Offense Stats Indict Children

[In a recent presentation at the Joint Oxfam HIV and Aids Programme Link and Learn Partner Platform 2007]

More than 50 percent of all sexual offences committed in the country and reported to Childline are committed by children under 18, with the youngest abuser being just seven years old.
Furthermore, according to statistics, at least 70 percent of all sexual crime victims are children younger than nine.

In comparison with figures released by Interpol, South Africa has the highest rape statistics in the world - 117 cases per 100 000 of its population - and of the victims, 40 percent were children.

(Linda) Naidoo (Director of Childline KZN) said South Africa had a very narrow definition of rape compared to many countries in the world, and added that when the new Sexual Offences Bill had been passed with an expanded definition of rape - including penetrative sexual offences on boys and men - the country's rape statistics would appear to be even higher.

story from GUS

>compare & contrast Ms. Naidoo's remarks in the article with What Will It Take.org

~It's a shame South Africa's not a rogue nation developing WMD's, the President could send our troops in there and clean that place up.

[photo google "brady bunch"\ not with above]

Art: New Climates

"New Climates will present new and existing artworks responding to the relationship between art, global climate change and networked culture. This curatorial weblog will create a flexible and open-ended space to address these ideas at a time when climate change has become a vital concern among artists."+

Searching for Seasons

In New York, this year, there were times when winter was warm and yet looked grey and dark and now, in spring, it has been snowing. The seasons have been stuttering and relapsing, turning backwards and forwards and effectively impressing the weather and the environment on the forefront of everyone’s mind. This is the context in which Shane Brennan developed his blog exhibition New Climates, which addresses global climate change. The featured works range in tone and message. Some are frightening like Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead’s London (2007), an appropriated and re-contextualized news broadcast that presents global warming catastrophe as an immediate reality; others offer more emotive narratives such as Joe Milutis’ Line of 32, a video in which the protagonist searches for signs of winter around the globe, and Calendar (2007) by Lisa Young, a rotating slideshow of images of the sky that were taken by the artist each morning she woke up for an entire year. B! rennan uses blog format to contextualize the works in different ways across the site, and to make visible the reactions viewers have had. Full disclosure: Brennan developed New Climates while a curatorial fellow at Rhizome but the excited response, new works and thriving site are truly all due to his curatorial choices and the urgent topic that is New Climates’ theme. -- Lauren Cornell*

+http://www.newclimates.com/

Filed under Art, New Work, The Future, Time, Information, Experience, Anthony Discenza, Randomness, Recombination, Discourse

*press release & link via: http://rhizome.org/syndicate/#news

~Apropos of nothing: I'm afraid the best remedy governments & their partners in the energy industries will find to slow global warming is nuclear power.-- That we're being frightened into being poisoned.--So the longer the powers that be do nothing to fix global warming the better off everything alive on earth will be.

Ad : Redirect Your Animal Instincts...

French AIDS-Condom Poster:

large/url

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2007/04/redirect-your-animal-instincts-with.html

by way of Aberrant News

After Hours Gene

Are You a Night Owl? Genetic Mutation Might Explain Why

A study in the Science journal finds, instead of following the typical 24-hour circadian clock, this altered gene may be responsible for stretching that clock to 27 hours. They say this information could help doctors in researching psychiatric disorders.
The finding could also help pharmacologists, who are working to develop drugs, to help people adjust to shift work or jet lag.

item's url | ABC-TV Chicago

~In time scientists will find every gene responsible for all facets of animal and human behavior.

[illus. not from above]

A CIA Man Speaks His Mind on Secret Abductions

...during an April 17 joint hearing of two House Foreign Affairs committees..on the Bush administration’s “extraordinary renditions” program...

(Michael) Scheuer (he CIA officer who launched the program in 1995 under the Clinton administration) stoutly defended the abduction program and attacked its critics.

Briskly reading a prepared statement, the bearded erstwhile operative denounced the parliamentary report, calling Europe “the earth’s single largest terrorist safe haven.”
“ The EU’s policy of easily attainable political asylum and its prohibition against deporting wanted or convicted terrorists to countries with the death penalty have made Europe a major, consistent, and invulnerable source of terrorist threat to the United States,” he asserted.
But Scheuer’s main intent seemed to deflect criticism from the CIA and lay it at the feet of senior White House officials and CIA lawyers, who he said approve every snatch proposed by the counterterrorism unit.
In doing so, he provided listeners with a rare public glimpse into what one long-ago CIA official-turned-critic, Victor Marchetti, called the “clandestine mentality,” an anything-goes mindset that separates CIA people from their brethren in the FBI, a law enforcement agency, and the Pentagon, whose spies for the most part are bound by military oaths.

"Each and every target of a rendition was vetted by a battery of lawyers at CIA and not infrequently by lawyers at the National Security Council and the Department of Justice,” he said, following “a written brief citing and explaining the intelligence information that made the rendition target a threat to the United States and/or its allies.”
“If mistakes were made,” he went on to say, “I can only say that that is tough, but war is a tough and confusing business .”
Protecting Americans “should always trump other considerations, especially pedantic worries about whether or not the intelligence data is air tight.”

The CIA , he added, is not “in the business of cleaning up afterwards. We’re in the business of pre-emption.”
But, (the hearing’s chairman, Massachusetts Democrat Bill) Delahunt persisted, “What about those who are clearly eventually determined to be innocent?”
“Mistakes are made, sir.”
“Mistakes are made.”

Scheuer said. “They’re not Americans, and I really don’t care.” He spread his arms, smiling. “It’s just a mistake.”
“And if they’re not Americans,” Delahunt persisted, “you really don’t care.” He shuffled some papers. “That’s very interesting.”

more http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002494626.html

via Secrecy News

~Performance art. No pies were thrown.
Some of the old alcoholic, sans prostate, CIA goons are freakin' hilarious. They still enjoy frightening women & children, scaring the rubes.
When it was over most of the audience felt like they'ld been pissed on.
Then again Mr. Schuer's crazy talk may have been to obscure his revelation of the various federal agencies involved in the Bush administration's secret rendition program.

>compare & contrast

U.S. Agents Interrogating Terror Suspects Held in Ethiopian Prisons | IHT

thanks Conscientious

[photo not w/above]

Speechwriting in Perspective:

A Brief Guide to Effective and Persuasive Communication

CRS Report
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/98-170.pdf

3X

the clown drowned #3

Why Does he Bush Administration Have A list of Everyone

Who Has Ever Used Anti-Depressants?

"Some news accounts have suggested that (mass murderer) Cho Seung-Hui had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government's files.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-does-bush-administration-have-list.html

via Unknown News

~This in no way suggests people like Cho-Seung-Hui are being monitored by federal agents. Because why would the gum'nt bother with losers when there's so many more important people to screw with and how could they keep a program like that a secret?

America's Favorite Terrorist Goes Free

"...in a 1998 interview with The New York Times, named himself as the chief organizer of a series of bombing attacks on hotels, shops and a diverse array of civilian installations in Cuba during the summer of 1997. These acts of deadly vandalism resulted in the death of Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo and wounded some others, among them children.

story | The Moderate Voice

>see also Posada Carriles: Chronology of a Murderer

suggested by the story Anti-Castro Terrorist Is
Released From American Jail on Unknown News

>related linnls on Spitting Image to posada

~"Yes Virginia America harbors terrorists".
Or to paraphrase that great senator from Arizona the John the Baptist of present-day neo-con America: "Terrorism in defense of liberty is no vice."

>compare & contrast Mr. Posada's C.V. with this article Padilla & the Zucchini Prosecution

McCain Jokes ABout Bombing Iran

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been caught on videotape joking about bombing Iran. McCain made the joke in response to a question from a voter in South Carolina. When asked about whether the U.S. should attack Iran, McCain began singing Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran to the tune of the old Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann." McCain has defended his joke. When reporters asked him last night if the joke was insensitive, McCain said: "Insensitive to what? The Iranians?" He went on to say "My response is, lighten up and get a life."

link to item | Democracy Now

~I use to feel sorry for the man because of the torture he suffered while a POW. Now I feel sorry for such a toadie suck-up he's turned out to be. He could've been the moral voice, the GOP's statesman for life.
He might get their nomination for president, but I don't think they've yet figured out how to steal votes on the scale his election would require.
(Giulini is too slick of an old-school gangster for the rubes.)
Maybe a pre-election bombing of Iran would insure a GOP win?

The GOPs Cyber Election Hit Squad

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2553

~Prove it in court of law...and for each subsequent appeal.

Lawmakers to Open Tillman-Lynch Hearing

Washington - As the Army probed Pat Tillman's death, investigators implored the CIA and Pentagon last year to scour their databanks for aerial video of the friendly fire incident, footage they believed might have been captured as a Predator drone flew over the scene.

An Air Force commando attached to Tillman's Army Ranger platoon testified that as the incident unfolded, he heard the unmanned reconnaissance plane's distinctive propellor buzz overhead.
His belief was later confirmed by a comrade at their tactical operations center, he said. "I was told it was over us during the ambush," this airman testified. His name was blacked out of documents the Army released last month.
Moments after hearing that attack on his fellow Army Rangers, the airman radioed a command center and requested air cover. No attack aircraft arrived to help.
His recollection of the Predator was enough to spark a search for any video the drone might have gathered. That search spanned six months, took investigators close to the highest reaches of the Pentagon and touched upon some of the most sensitive technology the United States possesses.

In October, however, the conclusive results came back from Navy Vice Admiral Eric T. Olson, deputy commander of the Special Operations Command: No video of the friendly fire episode was "known or suspected to exist."
Tillman's death received worldwide attention because he had walked away from a huge contract with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

story | AP via TruthOut

~I love the smell of conspiracy-coverup in the morning. (It's so easy to accidentally delete things.)

>see also Spitting Images's entries for tillman

RFID Sensor Network to Monitor Bushfire & Wildfire Ignitions

...that will alert fire brigades within two minutes of spotting a bushfire ignition.

The tiny TPX-VRF sensor said James Eades, (Telepathx) company CEO and founder will allow firelighters to respond to fires faster than ever, it is the first(?) real time early warning fire mapping solution available

Unlike geospatial satellite mapping systems that provide fire mapping data within 1-24 hours, or Ariel reconnaissance that rely on thermal imaging of hotspots this system is a terrestrial based system that can monitor and report ignitions with pinpoint accuracy.

Telepathx expects the systems will cost about $1500.00 USD per kilometre depending on sensor saturation.

press release | More RFID

Art: Arnd Drossel

Designer and artist Arnd Drossel gave a sneak preview of the wire sphere he plans to climb into and walk 300 km (186 miles) across the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia... to raise attention for people suffering from mental disorders. Constructed out of 250 bent stainless steel rods, the sphere weighs about 120 kilograms (265 pounds).

[photo/ caption "Rolling on the Wire" @ Deutsche Welle]

suggested by Daily Weird

Drossel Design http://www.drossel-design.de/navi.htm

~I don't generally care for stunts no matter what they're "to raise attention for" but I like this one: a rolling cage that can also function as a weapon; a pet rodent out for a spin in its exercise ball; a menacing 'bubble boy'. In the picture the rods look like they were weaved around Mr. Drossel like a ball of string from outside? Or a cocoon spun from within?

Also as I mentioned before I enjoy seeing individuals incorporate or adapt architectural structures to their persons as fashion statements or as art.

Immigration Raid/ ID Fraud Bust/ ID Sweep/ ...Investigate Mall

Immigration Authorities Raid Little Village Mall
Several Agencies Target Counterfeit Document Ring
Witnesses say up to 200 agents stormed the mall, locking it down and asking everyone inside and in the parking lot for IDs.
“They told me they had more than 122 people in custody, but they let them go, mostly. They got in custody 18 people,”

"Apparantly they had 60 warrants. It appears that they rounded up over 160 people,” said Fr. Brendan Curran of St. Pius Catholic Church. “They have 16 detained at this moment… we’re not sure why.”

"They had machine guns, shotguns, bullet-proof vests. It was a huge, huge endeavor,” (Ald. Ricardo) Munoz (22nd)

story w/photo

google's news link to 11 raid stories

~While reporting this story local tv news ran no photos or videos of the raid, of the federal officers in uniform doing their sworn duty serving their warrants and upholding the laws of the land. Which is odd because this mall is about a fifteen minute drive in midday from the garages of local CBS, NBC and ABC affliliated offices with their mobile news vans and closer still to the two Chicago daily newspapers with their (one time) award winning photo journalists. Perhaps the reporters and photographers from those news organizations were all out to lunch at the time of this raid.

see also this item Terror Raid (that's how google or the SunTimes' columnist titled it)

Tipsville: Sneed hears the federal raid Tuesday on a mall in Little Village, which culminated in the arrest of people charged with producing fraudulent immigration documents, has an ancillary twist.
• To wit: The feds feared the documents could be used by terrorists to skirt immigration laws.

from article BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist

>perhaps related:

Migrants Used to Justify a Homeland Security Police State

[excerpt]

Other new...programs include US government contracting with Lockheed-Martin to design and develop enormous unmanned airships, seventeen times the size of the Goodyear blimp, outfitted with high-resolution cameras to spy on the Mexican border. The airships are designed to float 12 miles above the earth, far above planes and weather systems. The high-resolution camera will watch over a circle of countryside 600 miles in diameter and could be moved to spy on any region of the US.

article by By Peter Phillips | TruthOut

~Are immigrants "the threat from within"--a phrase I've seen in print on a few occasions in the past year? Or is "the threat from within" an altogether different population poised to attack America's freedom?

Bioterrorism & Biocrimes

The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900
(Working Paper) by W. Seth Carus

http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/cbw/carus.pdf via Secrecy News

Pentagon Proposes New Info Access Restrictions

The Department of Defense has asked Congress to enact two expansive new provisions in the FY 2008 defense authorization act to help it restrict public access to information.

One of the provisions would create a new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act for certain unclassified information related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The other would establish civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized publication or sale of maps and images ("geodetic products") that the Secretary of Defense has designated for "limited distribution."

complete blog entry w/links |Secrecy News

~"Terrorism is easy" so unclassified info must be banned.

Also the DOD wants to penalize State Department designated "inappropriate disclosures" of geodetic information, "including postings of such products on the internet".

[illus. not with above]

"Ministry of Mystic Machines"

...is a collection of Japanese style figurative art work which are set in the imaginary world of alternate reality that is much like the Edo period. (Japan,the early 17th century to the middle of 19th century.)

>for example

Title : " Ougi " - the guard of shogun
Date : 1999
Material : oven clay (Sculpey) & acrylic color

more art of Keisuke Kishi
http://www.geocities.jp/kekishi/english/nainen_index.html

by way of Dr.Menlo

Little Public Plaques

http://www.fromkeetra.com/posts.php?post=026

~Anonymous well-wishing project.
Now if they got corporate sponsorship, I could see this really taking off.

How to Take Better Dirty Pictures

article http://www.mikeyandmandy.com/howto/column_05.html

by way of Dr.Menlo

Fun in the Great Outdoors

clearance 'cairn' nachusa, illinois

2X

"It has been reported that the 'ones that came before' created cairns resembling the scat of animals they most treasured as sources of food and materials.The rocks here are said to be arranged like the droppings of the Giant North American Land-Sloth, hunted to extinction shortly after the last ice age."

[photo & caption Stubbornson]

ArtServe: Australian National Museum

Art & Architecture mainly from the Mediterranean Basin, Japan, India & Cambodia

>for example

Asuka megalith

large photo w/url

from http://rubens.anu.edu.au/new/japan/

home page http://rubens.anu.edu.au/index.html

~Many photos and illustrations.

Frank Rich: Iraq Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac

"Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders."

http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/04/frank-rich-iraq-is-ultimate-aphrodisiac.html

thanks Conscientious

[photo not with above]

Blog: BPS Research Digest

(British Psychological Society)

>for example:

Brain Damage Turns Man into Human Chameleon

"...psychologists in Italy have reported the real-life case of AD, a 65-year-old whose identity appears dependent on the environment he is in. He started behaving this way after cardiac arrest caused damage to the fronto-temporal region of his brain.
When with doctors, AD assumes the role of a doctor; when with psychologists he says he is a psychologist; at the solicitors he claims to be a solicitor. AD doesn't just make these claims, he actually plays the roles and provides plausible stories for how he came to be in these roles."

more from the blog entry w/comments

BPS Research Digest Home:
http://www.bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/

Photography: Jim O'Connell

more from Scandalicious

Jim O' Connell's Flickr Gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimoconnell/

Stuff & Nonsense (blog): http://jim.mmdc.net/

Photobooth.net

Welcome to the gallery portion of our website. The gallery is comprised of photobooth images uploaded by users all over the planet. If you would like to add an image of your own, click here, or at any time, you can click the Contribute button on the navigation bar. We ask that you only upload images from chemical "dip and dunk" photobooths (color or black & white).

http://www.photobooth.net/gallery/

by way of bifurcated rivets

Fun with...Filters

3x

sprout!

"the gunman"

An image that NBC News say they received from Cho Seung-Hui, the shooter in the Virginia Tech shootings, is seen as it is aired on the NBC Nightly News, April 18, 2007. | Yahoo News Photos

~At least he got to exercise his constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms before he died.

--from James "Heard an ironic commentary on NPR the other day re: crazy shooter kid. 'it's easier to buy a gun than to get a prescription for anti-depressants'!"

>Stubbornson again, howabout "Guns don't kill people resident aliens kill people."
Or from a racist who's not a member of the NRA: "Guns don't kill people resident aliens with guns kill people."-
--Strike that, there are no racists who would go against the NRA?

Or make up your own nonsensical or snarky captions hedonists!

Archive-It

All Collections: http://www.archive-it.org/public/all_collections

via ResourceSelf

How Sorry Are We For the Blackburg Killings?

The political reality is that, for the various reasons outlined by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, gun control is a dead letter, even though polls consistently show that a majority of American voters support it.

http://www.slate.com/id/2164381/nav/tap2/

thanks Conscientious

~Obviously the children and grandchildren of our nations's senators & congresspersons don't attend Virginia Tech.

(Now he's...) Cho

"Oh the happiness I could have had mingling among you hedonists, being counted as one of you, only if you didn't (blank) the living (blank) out of me."

>more photos (with Cho pointing guns at the camera!) and crazy thoughts from "Cho's Manifesto :: Massacre at Virginia Tech" http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18186053/

~While I was watching Cho's video I wondered "who put what in the paraquat he was smoking?"

>also:

"One of the first Virginia Tech officials to recognize Cho's problems was award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni, who kicked him out of her introduction to creative writing class in late 2005.
Students in Giovanni's class had told their professor that Cho was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his cell phone. Female students refused to come to class. She said she considered him "mean'' and "a bully.''

from Va. Gunman Sent Videos and Photos to NBC | Guardian

>not enough? see also on Spitting Image:
Pistol & Rifle Club at Virginia Tech

(Book) Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y K Y L E C A S S I D Y

Beth, Paul, Gavin and Emma
AK-47, Bersa .380, Ruger P345

Paul: My family had guns the whole time I was a kid. then i went off and joined the army and went away and come back. I have guns now largely for the same reason I have fire extinguishers in the house and spare tires in the car. I'm a self reliant kind of guy. and there could come a time when I need to protect my family and i'm a self reliant kind of guy.

Beth: I have one for self protection. I was raised to never rely on anyone else to protect me or watch my back. It took me a year to pick out one that I liked.

more info & photos: http://www.armedamerica.org/

from Conscientious

Children's Museum Of Indianapolis

Online @ Indianapolis Marion County Public Library

browse or search collection:
http://digitallibrary.imcpl.org:8080/awweb/main.jsp?smd=2&nn=Collection1&nt=depository
(1000 photos of artifacts)

Art: The Male Gaze

"‘The Male Gaze’ is a group showing of works by over twenty influential artists showcasing the ever evolving concept of masculinity, homosexuality and the portrayal of men in their world and media. From sullen burger boys to the effete congnocenti, ‘The Male Gaze’ chronicals the cultural explosion of masculinity over the past 100 years in provocative images, installations and artworks."

more info/list of artists
http://www.obliquity65.com/?p=1458

from GUS

~Paste artist's names into Google or Google Image to find some of their work.

(USA) Major School Shootings in Last Ten Years

article

~There's a whole slew of them, averaging out to more than one major shooting per year.
We love our kids but we love our weapons more.

Give Up

[photo & caption from September 2000 (Cub Scout) Pack Meeting at the Ropkey Armor Museum (more) @\ not with above article]

Yahoo News Photo Search: Virginia Tech Shooting

Fred Smith of Atlanta, Ga. carries a cross to convey a message of hope to those on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia April 17, 2007

An unidentified attendee prays in the football stadium provided for overflow seating for the convocation to be attended by President Bush following the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va.

President Bush speaks to the crowd during a convocation to honor the victims of a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., Tuesday, April 17, 2007.

Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets prepare to change guard over a wreath placed in the War Memorial Chapel on the campus of Virginia Tech April 16, 2007

Invention: All-knowing browser

Xerox says it can determine demographic information such as your age, sex and perhaps even your income by analysing the pattern of pages you choose to access on the web and comparing them to a database of surfing patterns from other users with a known background.

Xerox suggests that the idea could be used by online merchants and advertisers who want to identify the types of users visiting their websites.

press release | New Scientist Tech

via Unknown News

NASA kept settlement in shuttle disaster secret

The space agency said the astronauts’ families wanted the $26.6 million payment to stay private.

Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said he understood the families’ desire for privacy, but he criticized NASA for not disclosing the settlements earlier. NASA, he said, was behaving as if the settlement were a source of embarrassment.
“It’s not NASA’s money. It’s public money,” he said.

Columbia’s astronauts died Feb. 1, 2003, when the shuttle broke up on re-entry.

story | Kansas City.com

from Secrecy News

~Discretionary funds or petty cash?

H. at Unknown News reflects: "I'm used to the secrecy, I guess. Business as usual. But I'm a little surprised that there was such a settlement at all. I guess I thought astronauts were, like, you know, knowingly risking their lives, kinda like soldiers or something. And soldiers sure as hell don't pass a jackpot like this along to their grieving families..

(and later after I mentioned something about NASA incurring liability once the Shuttle gave private industry and non-military people access to space:)

H. wrote: "I don't really understand what's up with these payouts to the astronauts' families. Clearly they should get a stipend to cover each family's fairly comfy middle-class existence (same as the families of dead soldiers should get, but don't, because Republican administrations hate the troops), but these multi-million payouts have the odd scent of a bribe..."

[photo not with above]

Mobile Phones Killing Bees

Study suggests radio-emitting devices could be responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder

story

see also on Spitting Image Mysterious disappearance of US bees creating a buzz

Pistol and Rifle Club (PRC) at Virginia Tech

~Thank Allah it wasn't an act of terrorism. The gunman was Cho Seung Hui--not a Muslim-- a 23-year old South Korean resident-alien Senior English Major living on campus in Harpers Hall. Allah Akbar. (Schizophrenia among resident-alien Asians in Appalachia is difficult for HMOs or Student Health Services to diagnose?)

"Schools should be places of sanctuary and security and learning." ---President Bush (Monday April 16, 2007)

"The purpose of the Pistol and Rifle Club (PRC) at Virginia Tech is to safely and legally enjoy the rights given to us in the 2nd Amendment, to educate students about legislation and legal issues involving these rights, provide means for students to shoot recreationally with fellow members, and to establish the premiere bench rest and tactical competitive pistol and rifle team at Virginia Tech.

There are several benefits to joining this organization:

+Access to a private range
+Discounts on reloading components
+Opportunities for competitive shooting
+Meet fellow gun-loving VT students and faculty
+Opportunities to hear knowledgeable speakers
+Ability to shoot other members' guns and learn more about them
+Another excuse to shoot your guns :-)

Got a gun? Submit your full size pictures and the names of each gun to our webmaster. Please make sure the serial number is not shown...

Pistol & Rifle Clubs Arsenal: http://www.prcvt.org.vt.edu/arsenal.html

Pistol & Rifle Club's Media Page (Videos): This page is dedicated to videos of competitive shooting, you can watch in awe as some of these shooters are absolutely amazing.

>for example: ...a video of Jerry Miculek setting 3 world records using a revolver. Jerry is referred to among IPSC shooters as the “Revolver God”. He is truly amazing. http://www.prcvt.org.vt.edu/media.html

Upcoming Events Tue Apr 17 - Wed May 16, 2007:
Nothing Currently Scheduled

PRC at Virgina Tech Home: http://www.prcvt.org.vt.edu/

>related: Virginia Shooting Sports Association Links of Interest http://www.myvssa.org/links.html (some 50 links)

~Note: there's absolutely no reason to assume that "the gunman" was a member of Virginia Tech's Pistol & Rifle Club or any of the other organizations affiliated with the Virginia Shooting Sports Association.

What if!? --I'm playing at yellow journalism because the early tv coverage of this monumental disaster said so little about where "the gunman" got his ammo & weapons, stored them, how he learned to shoot or where near or on campus he may have practiced.
I'm guessing the ATF and the local police on the contrary were very interested in everything about the guns he used: the gun-shows he may have visited in Virginia or elsewhere; the instructions: one-on-one, by book, video, or online--he may or may not have received; how he financed his hobby; his 2nd Amendment friends and acquaitances; the various permits and bills of sale he may or may not have possessed; etc.

Of course if Virgina Tech's Pistol & Rifle Club members were permitted to carry weapons to class undoubtedly far fewer people would have been killed.
That's not saying there wouldn't already have been any number of accidental shootings in and around campus.

I wonder if Cho Seung-Hui is found to be a member of a NRA affiliated campus or state organization would the media broadcast that information? Would make a big deal asking their viewers to question those organizations' membership policies?

I wonder if Cho Seung-Hui was being treated for a psychiatric disorder will the media broadcast that information? Name his doctor and his health insurance provider? Make a big-deal asking their viewers to question how a student at such a prestigious university "fell through the cracks" and was able to purchase or have access to weapons?

Our leaders will never be compelled to address the factors which enabled this man to kill.
However a review of Immigration & Naturalization's resident-alien program and procedures is long overdue?

>Update. According to NBC reporters, their expert former FBI profiler and Wednesday's Today Show, Mr. Cho Seung-Hui once had a fire in his dorm room; was disciplined for stalking female students; was a "loner", "a troubled student"; ignored greetings; his writings frightened fellow students from attending class; he "disliked blacks"; "never smiled"; caused a professor to have guards installed by the door of his (the professor's?) classroom; had been "referred for counseling"--(it wasn't mentioned who did the referring; perhaps the professor with the guards) and in the last five weeks had legally purchased in Virginia, (from a gunshop whose sales are linked to five separate homicides), the two handguns (a 22mm and a 9mm Glock --not a Baretta) he used. (My bad.)
Found on his body was "a rambling, multi-page note".
Recent bomb threats (not today's obviously) on the Virginia Tech campus and on the day of the massacre may have been made by him.

It's not known if he had prior experience with weapons. The NBC, & CBS reporters as well as the former FBI profiler didn't once mention the NRA.

Just one more in the long-line of America's lone gunmen?

I wonder if the assignments he submitted to his creative writing class (to impress the ladies with what a Korean badass he was?) were "frightening" & "disturbing" only by Virginia technical school english department standards.

I guess if the University takes responsibility for every student with mental health issues where would it end? Wouldn't all students with health problems and potential problems then expect assess to university funded intervention and treatment?
If you diagnose and treat the crazies, don't you have to diagnose & treat the diabetics, the bulimics, the cancer-ridden, etc. too?

I'm thinking he was a fish-out-of-water, a furriner, in one of the worst possible places he could be. (Go Bulldogs! Ya'll) A 23 year-old schizophrenic-- two-months away from graduating and going to work for the rest of his life in-the-store at the mini-mall with his parents-- virgin.

[photo not with above]

How many Koreans at Virginia Tech? Korean English Majors?

>Diederik remarks: "Insanity is interesting, people can vicariously project their irrational strivings and decompensations onto the "incidental" historical case, and politicians can groom their elactorates with new issues. It is great stuff, in honest examination.

Aug. 1, 1966: Former Marine Charles Joseph Whitman scales the 27-story tower at the University of Texas at Austin and begins shooting at passers-by the day after he killed his mother and wife. He kills 15 people and wounds 31 others before Austin police shoot and kill him."

~(Stubbornson) I once read that an autopsy revealed that Charles Whitman had an undiagnosed brain tumor, "in a particular part of the brain" that may have been more responsible than he was (or anyone with a rifle would be) for the killings. Perhaps the author was being kind. Mass shootings were rare events back then.

Let the children go on foot and on bike

Although statistics show that rates of child abduction and sexual abuse have marched steadily downward since the early 1990s, fear of these crimes is at an all-time high. Even the panic-inducing Megan's Law Web site says stranger abduction is rare and that 90 percent of child sexual-abuse cases are committed by someone known to the child. Yet we still suffer a crucial disconnect between perception of crime and its statistical reality. A child is almost as likely to be struck by lightning as kidnapped by a stranger, but it's not fear of lightning strikes that parents cite as the reason for keeping children indoors...

article by L. J. Williamson

~"The discourse of the predator is obviously the predator. Tales are bastards. There is an extremely valuable lesson in this, something of a deep truth. Hope America wakes up to sense its profundity."
-- D. (Diederik of Growing Up Sexually)

(Alabama) Gov. Bob Riley speaks about a sexual predator law at Decatur City Hall on Thursday. SEPTEMBER 29, 2005]

[photo not with above]

Airman Burned in Raygun Test

..a member of the 820th Security Forces Group, based at Moody Air Force Base, near Valdosta, (GA) which is evaluating the space-age weapon, known as the Active Denial System.
It fires an electromagnetic beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire.

...in January at the base, airmen fired beams from a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee at people pretending to be rioters and acting out other scenarios that U.S. troops might encounter in war zones.
The device's two-man crew located their targets through telephoto lenses and fired beams from more than 500 yards away - nearly 17 times the range of existing non-lethal weapons, such as rubber bullets.
The weapon uses millimeter wave technology, which is supposed to penetrate no deeper than 1-64th of an inch of skin, causing discomfort but no injuries.
During its 12 years of development, the Active Denial System has been tested on more than 600 volunteers with more than 10,400 exposures and only one other injury - a second-degree burn - requiring medical attention...

story | AP via 11 Alive

by way of Unknown News

>more

After being stationed by the driver, the square satellite dish mounted on top of the Army Humvee is aimed at the target by use of a video monitor and joystick...

Police are hoping that a scaled down version will be available for their own purposes inside of a decade. While the Army’s pain gun won’t be ready for active combat until at least 2010 that hasn’t stopped the Army from showing it off to the press

[photo and caption from article The Pain Gun | Slippery Brick]

Scribbly Gum Photo Galleries

(Australian) animals plants weather weird stuff

Yawning Tasmanian Devil

from Tassie Devils Get Dirty

many more photos http://www.abc.net.au/science/scribblygum/index_photos.htm

~Is the existence of Australia's unique animals more incredible than the heartless ways humans treat all creatures great and small? As the crown of creation it's odd how we persistently forget that the vast majority of animals are unable to adapt (like we can!) to the technological and economic miracles of modern society.

ACLU Releases Files on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan & Iraq

>see first Civilian compensation claims: a glimpse into US crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan

Over a third of the submitted claims—198—were denied on the grounds of “combat exclusion”—that the incident arose “from action by an enemy or resulted directly or indirectly from an act of the armed forces of the United States in combat”. Others were rejected for “lack of evidence” or “lack of proof of US involvement”. In addition, about 10 percent were rejected on the basis that the incidents, including some corroborated by eyewitnesses, had not been reported in the US military’s own “SIGACT” (significant action) database.

Of the 496 claims, only 164 resulted in cash payments to surviving family members. In about half those cases, the US accepted responsibility for the death of a civilian and offered “a compensation payment”. In the remainder, the Pentagon issued “condolence” payments—discretionary payments limited to $US2,500 and offered “as an expression of sympathy” but “without reference to fault”. In total, $32 million had been handed out

article

related: The ACLU received the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request it filed in June 2006.

http://www.docuticker.com/?p=12447

BE WARNED.
What happens if you go to the shops too fast in Iraq.

[caption & photo from "Ready FIRE Aim" blog entry
03/05 | The Open Mind/ not above links]

~The Open Mind link has information on "a sensible way to set up a checkpoint if you are are an occupying army", etc.

How To Write a Documentary Script

link to UNESCO press release & pdf document through: http://www.docuticker.com/?p=12454

Poop Report

http://www.poopreport.com/

Marines Used "Excessive Force" in Afghan Civilian Deaths

...after an ambush in Afghanistan last month, opening fire on pedestrians and civilian vehicles along a 10-mile stretch of road and killing 12 people - including a 4-year-old girl, a 1-year-old boy and three elderly villagers - an investigation by an Afghan human rights commission alleges.
The investigation, based on dozens of eyewitness interviews, found that Marines in a convoy of Humvees continued shooting at at least six locations along the road, miles beyond the site where they were ambushed by a suicide bomber in a van. They fired at stationary vehicles, passersby and others who were "exclusively civilian in nature" and had made "no kind of provocative or threatening behavior," according to a draft report of the investigation obtained by The Washington Post.
In addition to the 12 Afghans killed, including at least two women, 35 were wounded, and one Marine was injured by shrapnel.

On the Afghanistan shootings, Marine Corps officials said it would be standard for an infantry unit to use heavy fire to counterattack ambushers and leave the "kill zone" quickly, but they said there are concerns about reports that the unit killed civilians as far as 10 miles away. Shortly after the incident, the Marine platoon and its parent company were pulled out of the area and are in the Persian Gulf with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041407Y.shtml | WashPost via TruthOut

~Note no mention of Marines arrested or charges filed.

more on Spitting Image Marines Face U.S. Probe in Afghanistan Deaths

[A U.S. Air Force Airman talks with Afghan children at a refugee camp in Dar Ul Aman, Afghanistan, during a volunteer community outreach program on March 16, 2007. The program distributes donated clothes, shoes and toys each month to the children of Afghanistan. DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. Cecilio M. Ricardo Jr., U.S. Air Force. (photo defenselink not with above links]

Phenology with airborne sensors

Recent technological advances in studying the earth from space have resulted in a new field of phenological research that is concerned with observing the phenology of whole ecosystems and stands of vegetation on a global scale using proxy approaches.

The most successful of these approaches is based on tracking the temporal change of a Vegetation Index (like Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)). NDVI makes use of the vegetation's typical low reflection in the red (red energy is mostly absorbed by growing plants for Photosynthesis) and strong reflection in the Near Infrared (Infrared energy is mostly reflected by plants due to their cellular structure). Due to its robustness and simplicity, NDVI has become one of the most popular remote sensing based products.

...the limitation of current space based remote sensing, especially the spatial resolution and the nature of vegetation index-- (is because a) pixel in an image does not contain a pure target (like a tree, a shrub, etc.) but contains a mixture of whatever intersected the sensor's field of view.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenology

Project BudBurst

"...the idea is as simple as going outside and taking a walk in nature. As you walk, you’ll look for and record blooms and leaves that are easy to find in a neighborhood or local park. Then you’ll share what you find on the internet at budburst.org.

The project begins April 1 and will run until June 15... the observations of people like you can help scientists answer questions about the timing of this year’s northern hemisphere spring.

blog entry | EarthSky.org

Project BudBurst home http://www.windows.ucar.edu/citizen_science/budburst/

>Wiki's article on phenology

UK's Nature Calendar http://www.naturescalendar.org.uk/

[photo stubbornson\ not with above]

Poem: Buying the Whore

You are the roast beef I have purchased
and I stuff you with my very own onion.

You are a boat I have rented by the hour
and I steer you with my rage until you run aground.

You are a glass that I have paid to shatter
and I swallow the pieces down with my spit.

You are the grate I warm my trembling hands on,
searing the flesh until it's nice and juicy.

You stink like my Mama under your bra
and I vomit into your hand like a jackpot
its cold hard quarters.

---Anne Sexton @

Fun with Photoshop Filters

3X

the clown drowned #2

Poem: Senzaishû 1222

ON THE MEANING OF THE TEACHING “SECRETLY INSIDE HE IS A BODHISATTVA” FROM THE LOTUS SUTRA

before they realized
you didn't need to cross—

did they think you crossed it alone,
the ocean of suffering?

—Sakon Middle Captain Yoshitsune

more translations http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/waka.html

Study Casts Doubt on Abstinence-Only Programs

A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration's social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex.

The federal government spends $176 million a year on abstinence-only education, and millions more are spent every year in state and local matching grants. Harry Wilson, a top official in the Department of Health and Human Services, said yesterday that the administration has no intention of changing funding priorities in light of the results.

An early analysis by...(Mathematica Policy Research Inc)...showed some attitude shifts toward delaying sex among students in the abstinence programs, but those differences disappeared as students got older.

article | WashPost

The Research Journalism Initiative

"...is dedicated to changing the way students learn about socio-economic, religious and geopolitical conflict by providing students a direct link to regions of conflict abroad. Using non-violent human rights activism, RJI teams living in the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe gain access to the lives of the communities they seek to learn from. Students then speak directly to kids their own age abroad via live, Internet video conferencing."

more welcome http://www.researchjournalisminitiative.net/index.htm

Bilin @

media archive (videos)
library (more videos)

~Note the Research Journalism Initiative is responsible for the video mentioned in the reports below on the Israeli Army's use of children as human shields.

(Amateur video prompts) Israel 'human shield' suspension

... footage shot earlier this week showed Israeli soldiers apparently forcing Palestinians to stand in front of their armoured jeep.
Israeli law forbids the military from using human shields.

Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups have regularly complained that Israel uses human shields to stop youths from throwing stones at them, but there has often been no proof.

In March, Israeli human rights group accused Israel's army of using two young Palestinians as human shields during an operation in the West Bank.
... B'Tselem says it believes the Israeli soldiers knowingly exposed the three to danger as they expected to find armed men in the houses.

story | BBC (~Note no BBC photos or link to video of Israeli solders using Palestinian children as shields.)

also IDF soldiers use Nablus youths as ‘human shield’ w/link to video? | YNet

The activist said this is the first time he had seen soldiers ordering Palestinians to serve as human shields for army vehicles, but added that in the past few months he had witnessed a number of incidents in which soldiers used Palestinian civilians during their activity.

>related B'T'selem: http://www.btselem.org/English/ (~No photos or videos of Israel's use of human shields here, but there are testimonies.)

~I'm guessing the video is the reason for the commander's suspension; since the March incident reported (and linked) above was not videoed and no mention is made of an Israeli army investigation.

There's a universe out there, not very far from here, where if it's not on video it never happened.

What Will It Take?

Ending Abuse of Women + Girls Starts With Us
Building the Safest State for All Women + Girls

large print ad (url)

http://www.whatwillittake.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?&pid=506&srcid+183

~So the abuse and violence directed at women + girls in my state is very different from the abuse and violence suffered by men and boys? Perhaps the abuse is different only for educational and fund-raising purposes. Maybe there's no federal money available for making our state safer for men & boys.

Poetry: BLOOM / BLOOD

A Commemorative Poem In Three Parts Written By Joe Napora
For Maura Clarke :: Dorothy Kazel :: Ita Ford :: Jean Donovan
Raped And Murdered By U. S. Supported Government Troops In El Salvador :: December 2, 1980/

1547, Dec. 2, Death of Hernan Cortes

"So it was decided to put Cuahtemoc to torture."

We always made fun of explorers and
the missionaries who went with them
to the land of the naked brown boobies.
National Geographic photos. Our first entrance
into the commercial paradise of pornography.
And later the novels of Melville pointing
to how spreading the Word
lead to its breaking.

". . . .and when he was hanged, or was tortured
to reveal the treasures of Montezuma. His
feet were smeared with oil and exposed
many times to the fire, but his torturers
gained more infamy than gold."

Even young we wondered
how could they help
but be born again
into their flesh?

And yet. And yet. Even though we knew
just who was the enemy, who
had invaded our own innocence, who took
from us the child's heroes. Whole
peoples reduced to photos torn
from travel magazines. Even so
with them the missionaries took us
and in some small way redeemed us
from our unspoken privilege.

1980, Dec. 2

"Katun 8 Ahau"

in such misfortune

The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel

The bodies form
a cross. This is not
the intent of the men
who use vines to drag them
out of the hole.
But it makes an acceptable composition
to the editors of Newsweek
who choose this picture for their centerfold.

No longer dressed in heavy habits
but in white and blue, and one
in a floral shirt, three other nuns
pray at the mounded dirt

the mounded dirt that was
but moments ago the common grave.

more http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lnapora.htm

EyeSee360 Inc.

"...a technology leader in single-shot panoramic imagery for both still & video photography. ...applied expertise in robotic vision, image rendering, and software interface expertise... creating interactive panoramic still images and videos.*

about EyeSee360

marathon

links to more EyeSee Inc. panoramic examples http://www.eyesee360.com/examples/

*...Navy Advanced Sensor Systems

"... including panoramic visual imaging technologies, on-board unmanned vehicles... in ..(fixed-location, field deployments for convoy protection, critical infrastructure protection, perimeter security and a host of other uses)

Panoramic imaging hardware and software developed by EyeSee360 Inc. will be integrated with the Augusta Systems technologies for use in the advanced sensor systems, as will other technologies, including advanced algorithms for change detection, wireless communications systems and display technologies.

"Our technologies, combined with EyeSee360's imaging technologies and others, dramatically increase the data gathering capabilities of unmanned vehicles and field deployments," said (Patrick Esposito II, president and chief operating officer of Augusta Systems) "By utilizing components of our SensorPort and SensorBridge products with other customized features, we're helping the military to connect panoramic imaging and other sensor data to the network-centric environment and to advance a distributed, intelligent network- centric infrastructure."

press release

Fun with...Filters

3X

benwah

Vatican Best Films List

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of cinema in 1995, the Vatican compiled this list of "great films." The 45 movies are divided into three categories: "Religion," "Values" and "Art." The USCC (US Conference of Catholic Bishops) classification for each film follows its description

>for example

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) British comedy classic in which a timid bank employee (Alec Guinness) concocts a scheme to hijack a shipment of gold bullion with the aid of professional crooks (Sidney James and Alfie Bass), then melt it down in the foundry of an accomodating sculptor (Stanley Holloway) and recast it as Eifel Tower souvenirs for export to Paris. Scripted by T.E.B. Clarke and directed by Charles Crichton, the tongue-in-cheek depiction of a perfect crime has one hilarious flaw after another, culminating in a wild police chase through London and a neat twist ending in South America. Comic crime caper and mild menace. The U.S. Catholic Conference classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. Not rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. (HBO, $19.98)

[still via google/ not USCC]

more http://www.usccb.org/movies/vaticanfilms.shtml

Quotation Websites

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/qyd/sites.asp

FTC Issues Report on Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children

The Federal Trade Commission gave a mixed review of the movie, music, and video-game industries’ self-regulatory programs and their marketing of violent entertainment products to children in its latest report to Congress.

...the FTC found that while video game retailers have made significant progress in limiting sales of M-rated games to children, movie and music retailers have made only modest progress limiting sales.

http://www.docuticker.com/?p=12421 w/links to pdf, etc.

NipGuards

Protection Against Painful Nipple Abrasion & Chafing

Boston Marathon 1998

Before NipGuards

http://www.nipguards.com/

Privatized War

[excerpt]

The American State Department alone has allocated a $1 billion budget over five years for protection of its personnel and certain foreign dignitaries. This unheard-of demand immediately elicited vocations. Former military personnel and adventurers started little improvised companies and hired agents at high speed. To reduce salary cost, some went to seek out retired soldiers in Latin America and South-East Asia. Some entrepreneurs made a fortune at top speed: the American company Blackwater alone has received over $570 million in five years from the federal government. Its competitor, Triple Canopy, created by three people in 2003, figured three years later on the list of the 100 biggest companies in the Washington area. For an individual client - a businessman or a journalist - a personal protection team can cost up to $6,500 a day.
Now the United States counts on private security firms to secure airports, infrastructure, Baghdad's "Green Zone," and even certain military bases that lack sentinels. The border between the defensive missions of private agents and soldiers' combat operations is becoming blurred, since, confronted with insurgents, both groups sometimes help one another. Blackwater, which alone counts close to a thousand employees in Iraq, has deployed armored vehicles, airplanes and helicopters.
In fact, these companies accomplish a number of missions essential to the army as subcontractors, ranging from telecoms to prisoner interrogation. The Pentagon has already adapted by inventing the concept of "total force," which includes active-duty soldiers, reservists, civilian defense officials and, finally, private personnel, the role of whom should grow still further. At the end of 2006, more than 180 security companies employing over 48,000 people - the maj'rity fulfilling paramilitary operations - were active in Iraq.

story

By Yves Eudes | Le Monde via TruthOut

Kurt Vonnegut Dies at 84

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18066068/?GT1=9246

"I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done."
"Nice going, God!"
"Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have."
"I feel very unimportant compared to You."
"The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around."
Part of the Bokononist last rites.

---from Cat's Cradle via http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut

~"So it goes". (Go figure.)

Arsenic In Chicken Feed May Not Be Good

...about 70 percent of the 9 billion broiler chickens produced annually in the U.S. are fed a diet containing roxarsone, the article points out.

story

~Thank god it's not pet food! The pet food manufacturers' stocks couldn't take another hit. People might even start feeding their pets table scraps!!

Climate sensor to be on new satellite

April 11 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have announced a plan to restore a key ozone layer climate sensor to a satellite scheduled for launch in 2009

... the sensor will be returned to the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, or NPOESS, program.

However, officials said the sensor's restoration will be contingent on successful negotiations between the Northrop Grumman Space Technology Corp., the mission's prime contractor, and the government.

A recent restructuring of the program had removed the sensor from the mission.

press release | Science Daily

~The White House and the Energy Department want control over the on-off switch for this sensor?

ITAG Trepan

"ITAG is a grass roots organization comprised of people from many backgrounds and races who have experienced the benefits of being trepanned. Some of us are willing to present ourselves publicly so that the old stigma associated with making a hole in the skull will be worn down over time. .."

http://www.trepan.com/

~The problems my body's having with its organs. muscles & soft tissue can't be alleviated by additional windows or ventilation shafts. I'm already carrying more than my share of airborne chemical toxins thank you.

The Untermenschen Are Baaack

(i.e. The Right-Wing Brain in Action: Glenn Greenwald)

[excerpt]

More "untermenschen" theorists

Neoconservative and war supporter Marty Peretz: "Even the bare rudiments of civilization will not soon come back to the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates."

Neoconservative and war supporter John Podhoretz: "What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/07/authoritarianism/index.html

>see also An Exercise for My Outgoing Students
| Muhlberger's Early History

thanks Joerg

~I use to laugh at Hollywood's portrayals of southern belles and tv's cheer-leaders & beauty queens. How is it they can be so involved, live such busy lives and be so thoughtless of others beyond their cliques?
But now I understand that frivolity, or cut-throat glamour-- either one--is not a Southern female affectation/industry or an exalted remnant from the siege mentality of the managers of the penal colony that was Dixie.
Men like Reynolds and Podhoretz and perhaps many men & women making careers today in the gov't, the military, law enforcement and 'security' are similarly exclusive if far less humorous.
And their privileges and actions, their party's/squad's necessarily essential? world view--that tell-tale know-it-all esprit de blindness to humans in the way or not like them--create life and health threatening consequences for the rest of us not blessed with those traditional values and not members of their clubs or on their teams.
It's not funny anymore.

[Abu Ghraib photo not from above]

500 Terror Attacks in EU in 2006 - But Only 1 by Islamists

There were almost 500 acts of terrorism across the European Union in 2006 -- but only one, the foiled suitcase bomb plot in Germany, was related to Islamist terror, a new...(Europol, the European Union's law enforcement organization) ...report reveals.

However, Islamist attacks...were aimed at mass casualities, the report points out. As a result, "investigations into Islamist terrorism are clearly a priority for member states' law enforcement," the report writes. Half of the 706 terrorism-related arrests made in 2006 were related to Islamist terrorism, with France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands having the highest number of arrests of Islamist terrorist suspects.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,476599,00.html

thanks Conscientious

~So EU's law enforcement investigations into Islamist terrorism have been effective, right-on-the-money? (And without renditions?!)
Or has the terrorist threat from Muslim extremists been exaggerated all along?
If Islamist assaults aimed at mass casualties have failed wouldn't al Qaeda's "sleeper cells" have adapted by now? Given the EU's large restive Muslim population and the widely publicized jihad against the West, one might wonder why small but frequent al Qaeda bombings in the EU would be more the exception than the rule.
Maybe next year?

Recently all over the world law enforcement definitions of "acts of terrorism" have changed. In the States for example a person can be arrested and charged with an "act of terrorism" directed against one (or is it two?) other specific person(s). Soon charges of "acts of terrorism" will be part and parcel of messy American divorce proceedings?

How many of the 500 acts above would have been reported as terrorism ten or twenty years ago?

Is it conceivable that given what now constitutes terrorism, there're so few crazy Muslims wreaking revenge on their European bosses?
Is this good news or what!

[photo not with above]

TV: Future Weapons "Railgun"

"Futureweapons" (April 10; 9 p.m. Discovery ) profiles the Navy's technologically advanced USS San Antonio and looks at the latest electromagnetic railgun.

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/future-weapons/future-weapons.html?w99-502-ah-1015

~The program reported that the Navy plans to be working with a 64 mega-joule electromagnetic railgun by 2016 that would allow one gun and one ship to cover an arc of 440 nautical miles.
The railgun doesn't fire explosive rounds: because of the massive kinetic energy it can like a shot gun shred large area "soft targets" (no mention of how large an area) with pellets and beebees as well as fire unit projectiles to destroy "hard targets".

Similar electromagnetic technology is being adapted by Sandia Labs to produce 120mm "coilgun" mortars for use on Army vehicles to shoot projectiles 6 miles. A prototype coilgun mortar will be ready for testing in 2 months.
No mention of what explosive, chemical or biologic rounds the coilgun mortar might fire.

Here's Wiki's Coilgun article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun

Here's a DIYer's railgun and coilgun website: http://tesladownunder.iinet.net.au/Rail_gun.htm

>Spitting Image's search results for railgun

Another Enemy of the People?

"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. "

article by Mark Graber

thanks Conscientious

The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library

more Image Database Search Results (39,000 images):

http://www.thdl.org/collections/resources/imagedb_results.php?pageMode=back&firstImage=41

The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library is an international community using Web-based technologies to integrate diverse knowledge about Tibet and the Himalayas for free access from around the world.

home: http://www.thdl.org/index.php

Visual Materials: Processing & Cataloging Bibliography

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/resource/vmbib.html#research

Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination

Documentation by Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Photographers

Photographers working for the Farm Security Administration Historical Section (later transferred to the Office of War Information) were encouraged to document continuity and change in many aspects of life in America during the years the unit was in operation. They were particularly encouraged to photograph billboards and signs as one indicator of such developments. Although no documentation has been found to indicate that photographers were explicitly encouraged to photograph racial discrimination signs, the collection includes a significant number of this type of image...

>for example

14) Rome, Georgia. September 1943.
Esther Bubley, photographer. "A sign at the Greyhound bus station."
[Sign: "Colored Waiting Room."]

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/085_disc.html

by way of LOC's Sources for Images of African-Amercan History

Library of Congress: Picture Catalogs Online

A growing number of libraries, archives, and museums offer ready access to their visual materials through Web-based searchable databases that focus on photographs, prints, and drawings. The Prints and Photographs Division, for instance, offers the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), which provides access to a large cross-section of images. Other institutions' databases offer regional and subject strengths that may not be available anywhere else. This list of online picture catalogs will help you find historical, documentary images described and, often, pictured in such databases.

The selection of about 50 catalogs is representative rather than exhaustive.

It is limited to sites that emphasize online catalogs and finding aids for pictorial collections.
It highlights databases that cover historical and documentary images in general subject areas, rather than those that focus on a single topic.
Most have more than 1,000 records and are predominately in the English language.
Many (not all) include digital images.
When catalogs include non-pictorial materials, the search screens make it obvious and easy to limit a query to still pictures.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/resource/223_piccat.html

British Airways Sat Corpse in 1st Class

From The Sunday Times
March 18, 2007

A BRITISH Airways passenger travelling first class has described how he woke up on a long-haul flight to find that cabin crew had placed a corpse in his row.

The body of a woman in her seventies, who died after the plane left Delhi for Heathrow, was carried by cabin staff from economy to first class, where there was more space. Her body was propped up in a seat, using pillows.

The woman’s daughter accompanied the corpse, and spent the rest of the journey wailing in grief.

Paul Trinder, who awoke to see the body at the end of his row, last week described the journey as “deeply disturbing”, and complained that the airline dismissed his concerns by telling him to “get over it”.

“It was a complete mess — they seemed to have no proper plans in place to deal with the situation,” said Trinder, 54, a businessman from Brackley, Northamptonshire.

The woman died during a nine-hour flight on a Boeing 747. Trinder was catching up on sleep when he was woken by a commotion and opened his eyes to see staff manoeuvring the body into a seat.

“I didn’t have a clue what was going on. The stewards just plonked the body down without saying a thing. I remember looking at this frail, sparrow-like woman and thinking she was very ill,” said Trinder.

“She kept slipping under the seatbelt and moving about with the motion of the plane. When I asked what was going on I was shocked to hear she was dead.”

The woman’s daughter and son-in-law arrived soon after and began grieving. Trinder said: “It was terrifying. I put my earplugs in but couldn’t get away from the fact that there was a woman wailing at the top of her voice just yards away. It was a really intense, primal sound.

“I felt helpless. Grief is a very personal thing; it’s not as if there was anything I could do or say.”

Trinder, chief executive of Capital Safety, which makes products for the building industry, holds a BA gold card and travels more than 200,000 miles a year with the airline.

He became particularly concerned about the state of the body. “When you have a decaying body on a plane at room temperature for more than five hours there are significant health and safety risks,” he said.

After the plane landed, those in first class remained on board for an hour before police and a coroner gave the all-clear.

“The police even started interviewing me as a potential witness, although I had no idea what had happened to the woman. I just kept thinking to myself: ‘I’ve paid more than £3,000 for this’,” Trinder said.

When contacted by BA about the complaint, Trinder says he was told he would not be compensated and should “get over” the incident.

BA said the dead woman was taken into first class because the rest of the plane was full.

A spokesman said: “When a customer passes away on board it is always difficult and we apologise for any distress caused.”

He said there were about 10 deaths each year out of 36m passengers.

Other carriers use different procedures. Singapore Airlines has introduced “corpse cupboards” on its Airbus 340-500 aircraft. Cabin crews use the locker if there is no empty row of seats to place a corpse.

url with link to 360 comments: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1530572.ece

~Death is always an inconvenience.

Note no mention of "the children" in 1st class who may have been forced to share their jet powered tube with the dead woman and her wailing relatives.

Places to Go Before You (Or They) Die

In 1972, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, an international treaty that "seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity."
Six years later, UNESCO created a list of World Heritage Sites that has since grown to include 812 locations worldwide...

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