October 31, 2007
Pandemic Planning at the Community Level: Online Database
...a new Web site devoted to bringing together community-level practices for dealing with public health emergencies. At the moment that site has over 130 practices from four countries, 22 states, and 33 counties. It’s available at PandemicPractices.org .
blog entry | Research Buzz
~I may be wrong but websites like this tend to get musty pretty quick. They're usually one or two person's great idea about the internet and information sharing that few otherswill make the time to maintain. Give it an 'B' for concept and a 'D' for feasibility. Or what's our fax-machines for anyway? (Check back in six months for cob-webs.)
[photo stubbornson\ not with above]
October 30, 2007
Going naturally into the hereafter
Some cemeteries are requiring eco-friendly burials...
...grave markers...aren't permitted in natural burial sections of Forever Fernwood in Mill Valley, Calif.
At that cemetery near San Francisco, locating the grave of a departed loved one is like an electronic scavenger hunt.
"We issue the family a Google map with the GPS coordinates," said Jay Boileau, executive vice president of Forever Enterprises, owner of the 32-acre facility.
>related:
"A technique called promession is often touted as the 'new cremation'. Developed by Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak, it involves freezing a body and converting it into a fine organic powder. It is not, however, very easily available outside Sweden.
Should I choose to be buried or cremated? w/various links
by way of Daily Weird [10/29/07]
[photo stubornson\ not from above]
Spotlight on Arts Grantmaking in the SF Bay Area
http://www.docuticker.com/?p=17418
October 29, 2007
On the prowl for ghosts
Ghost hunters use cameras and ELF sensors to search for and attempt to communicate with ghosts...
Each of the five investigators had video cameras, digital cameras and a few even had voice recorders or Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) sensors.
~Do the ghost hunters bring this equipment before or after the clients' payment clears? How much of their success is based on their customers' satisfaction? Can the ghosts respond to the living's wishes?
Book Ad: Our sensory profile
Seeker, avoider, bystander and sensor are terms that have emerged from the study of sensory experiences: how people relate to sounds, such as rock music, and tastes, such as the sourness of lemonade, and touch, the feel, for example, of silk between the fingers.
How people react to sensory experience often dictates how they behave, what they like and dislike and, most important, who they'll get along well with.
All this comes out in a new book, “Living Sensationally,” by Winnie Dunn, a professor and chair of the department of occupational therapy education at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
~Another category for Homeland Security profilers to add to their list to aid them in spotting potential terrorists or another way for advertisers to group people together in order to better direct their products' message to the most susceptable consumers?
[And what sometimes happens when researchers 'discover' for example categories like seeker, avoider, bystander and sensor, visual and certainly numerical representations are created. Images if you prefer.]
[photo not with above]
UK: War planes to mark NFL game
Wembley stadium is to host the first ever NFL American Football game outside the US on Saturday and to mark the occasion there will be a fly-over of British and US Air Force (USAF) planes.
pess release \ Harrow Times
Databases: Satellites Zoom in on Air Pollution Hotspots
With the help of modern satellite technology and a project known as TEMIS, scientists are now measuring and mapping the concentrations and transboundary movements of air-polluting emissions. For the first time, anyone with an Internet connection can access near-real time satellite images of health-threatening pollutants. You can even download the data into Google Earth, which will project the images onto the globe in a series of short films.
ink to link | Resource Shelf
Paper: GLBTQ content in comics/graphic novels for teens
This paper aims to provide an historical perspective and current guidance for youth librarians collecting graphic novels for teens…The paper provides a brief overview of US and Canadian censorship of comics, including how this legacy affects today’s market. It recognizes the difficulty of obtaining information and recommendations for teen-appropriate graphic novels containing GLBTQ content, and makes suggestions for core collection items. Only English sources from the USA and Canada are reviewed.
link to links | Resource Shelf
October 28, 2007
Book Ad: A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality
The book, in actuality, is about how parents can react to a male child or teenager who rejects his own gender and adopts a highly feminized style of activity and interest. To a lesser degree, the book also deals with how parents can and should deal with a female child or teenager who displays intense masculine patterns of interest. In this sense then, the book is about preventing a fuller and more complete expression of homosexuality when the child developmentally reaches adulthood.
blog entry | Truth Is Here
from Diederik
[photo not with above]
October 27, 2007
Erowid Experience Vaults
"The Erowid Experience Vaults are an attempt to catalog the wide variety of experiences people have with psychoactive plants and chemicals as well as experiences with endogenous (non-drug) mystical experiences, drug testing, police interactions, deep experiences of connection to music, etc."
http://www.erowid.org/experiences/
~"One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small and the pills that mother gives you don't do anything at all."
[illus & caption not with above link]
The 6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World
http://www.cracked.com/article_14979_6-most-terrifying-foods-in-world.html
article by way of the Daily Weird
Jury Acquits Florida Woman of Child Abuse Over Daughter's Genital Piercing
...to make it uncomfortable for her to have sex....
by way of Daily Weird
>see also Pravda's g-rated version.
The Ten Most Dangerous Organizations in America
Author: Jason Rantz
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/challenges.php?id=1385102
October 26, 2007
Internet Attitudes Poll: One In Four Americans Say the Internet Can Serve as a Substitute For a Significant Other
...the percentage was highest among singles, of which 31% said it could be a substitute. There was no difference among males and females but there was a split based on political ideology.
>related blog entry | The 463 InsideTechpolicy
~People who take polls often find themselves in a bind to voice opinions about ideas they haven't given much thought. People who take polls say the darndest things.
However the willingness to consider a 'significant other', for example, as an activity, place or thing and not necessarily a living person is most interesting. My imaginary friends live!
[photo google\ not with above]
Keep Schools Open After Shooting, Psychologist Advises
'Step on a crack, break your mothers back'.
[photo Gary, IN Park district; caption Stubbornson not with above]
Book: Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became Illness
... a new book chronicles the “unscientific” way that revisions to psychiatry’s bible, "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” were made. Using social anxiety disorder and antidepressant Paxil as examples, it shows how the creation of new mental disorders opened the door to the drug industry and “pathologized” normal behavior.
The number of mental disorders the general population might exhibit leaped from 180 in 1968 to more than 350 in 1994,” notes (Christopher) Lane, Northwestern’s Herman and Beulah Pearce Miller Research Professor.
Humans Perceive Others’ Fear Faster than Other Emotions
[Vanderbilt University researchers have discovered that...]
[film still not with link]
The technique, continuous flash suppression, keeps people from becoming aware of what they are seeing for up to 10 seconds. Using this technique, the team had research subjects look at a screen through a viewer, similar to the eyepieces on a microscope, which allowed different images to be presented to each eye. Many images were rapidly presented to one eye while a static image of a face was presented to the other. The multiple images served as visual “noise,” suppressing the image of the face. The subjects indicated when they first became aware of seeing a face, enabling the researchers to determine if the expression on the face had any impact on how quickly the subject became aware of it.
The team found that subjects became aware of faces that had fearful expressions before neutral or happy faces.
Thousands moved into (California's) fire-risk areas
Since 2000, more than 55,000 people have moved to the neighborhoods touched by this week's fires, according to the analysis. Many settled in some of the riskiest wildfire areas vulnerable to the types of firestorms now raging through pine forests and dry scrub from San Diego to the mountains north of Los Angeles.
item | USA Today via Daily Weird
~I've no idea how this rate of home building compares to other California counties but the numbers suggest an added dimension(s) to extent of the destruction. (A 'location' realtors are reluctant to talk about?)
[illus google/not from above]
~In America if you can afford it (or are ill-informed) you're free to build you family's home surrounded by thousands of acres of kindling.
October 25, 2007
More Than 755,000 on US Terrorist Watch List
The US terrorist watch list includes more than 755,000 names and continues to grow, the US Government Accountability Office said...
The list exploded from fewer than 20 entries before the September 11, 2001...
story | Agence France-Presse via TruthOut
[photo not with above]
October 24, 2007
Raytheon Awarded $45.5 Million for Sensor Netting Technology
(...the Raytheon Solipsys Tactical Component Network (TCN(R)) technology.) ... provides a critical warfighting capability in the form of a sensor netting framework to achieve a single integrated picture and joint interoperability.
TCN also provides a path forward for a joint framework to support an interoperable 'plug-and-fight' architecture, which is needed by the warfighter today."
~This 'sensor netting framework' is what's missing from Boeings recently installed and inoperable virtual fence??
New Chinese Mission to Moon Lifts Off
Chang’e-1 represents the first step in the Chinese ambition to land robotic explorers on the Moon before 2020.
Chang’e-1 has four mission goals to accomplish. The first is to make three-dimensional images of many lunar landforms and outline maps of major lunar geological structures. This mapping will include the first detailed images taken of some regions near the lunar poles.
Chang’e-1 is also designed to analyze the abundance of up to 14 chemical elements and their distribution across the lunar surface. Thirdly it will measure the depth of the lunar soil and lastly it will explore the space weather between the Earth and the Moon.
The spacecraft is large, weighing in at 2350 kg and it will operate from a low, circular lunar orbit, just 200 km above the surface of the Moon. From here, it will perform its science mission for a full year.
ESA European Space Operations Centre is collaborating with the Chinese on this mission by providing spacecraft and ground operations support services to CNSA.
Chang’e-1 carries a variety of instruments: a CCD stereo camera, a laser altimeter, an imaging interferometer, a gamma-ray/X-ray spectrometer, a microwave radiometer, a high-energy particle detector, and a solar wind particle detector.
~American tv offers little news about this and the Japanese space missions. Perhaps NASA has final approval over which space related stories get broadcasted by tv news outlets for Americans? Perhaps the Chinese and ESA are unrealistically optimistic about their chances for a successful mission?
(Philadelphia) Announces Surveillance Camera Installations
...local taxpayers will pay $8.9 million for the installation of 250 video surveillance cameras.
The city hired Unisys, a security company, to do the installation. Unisys will set up cameras, network, software and hardware and maintain the system. Limited duty police officers and, eventually, trained citizens will monitor the system.
Bush Declares War on Fire
The Enemy
article | Uncyclopedia
thanks Conscientious
Philadelphia To Install $5.5M Airport Parking Sensor System
The sensors will be equipped to tell drivers rounding the corners of each row of spaces whether or not parking is available in that row...
A similar system is in place in Atlanta, and other airports are experimenting with similar technologies.
"If it helps people find a parking space more easily, and that's what it's designed to do, it'll make it a more pleasurable experience," Ms. Miller (the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA) spokeswomen) said.
Book: Administration of Torture
A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond by Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh
blurb/interview/excerpts/ http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/978023114/9780231140522.HTM
from Secrecy News
[AbuGhraib photo not with above]
Photocaption Non Sequitur
California Fires
~Once again all men and women of peace should thank Allah, who in his infinite wisdom & understanding has kept the knowledge of the destructive power of fire on Southern California from the evil plans of terrorist groups. Imagine if Al Qaeda Iranians were reponsible for the devastation? Or illegal Mexican workers?
If this were an election year would the media try to make a case for a planned attack against celebrities?
Are there infra-red satellite photos of the exact place and time the first fire was started? Are there photos from space, sometime later, of the other locations fires began?
Has Homeland Security reviewed these photos and found no international involvement? Have known former arsonists been locked up as a precautionary measure? Are any being questioned as 'persons of interest'? Might any of them be Mid-Eastern or Muslim?
Are many people being arrested or detained for a variety of reasons since a state of emergency has been declared?
How much might it cost the taxpayer per home saved? On Tuesday the winds died down so that fire retardant could finally be dropped from planes.
October 23, 2007
Encyclopedia Smithsonian: Photography
links:
http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/Art_and_Design/Photography.htm
Photography: Smithsonian's Nature’s Best 2006
more images of nature collected by the Smithsonian Museum http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/natures%5Fbest%5F2006/gallery/index.html
~How soon until these 2006 photographs begin to look obsolete? How does that happen? Who knew photographs had a 'shelf-life' a 'freshness code'. It depends on the technology not the subject matter?
Nature's Best images are an exotic animal or locale, a professional photographer and lab and a staff of magazine editors away from anyone who can afford a visit to the Smithsonian Museum or the price of a magazine. Why would anyone bother with the view from one's window or the living creatures one might see around one's town, when most every natural thing pales in comparison?
National Museum of Natural History
search results for video: http://ripley.si.edu:8765/search/query.html?st=11&charset=iso-8859-1&ql=a&col=nmnh&qt=video
Art: Ron Mueck
[more Ron Mueck photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ronmueck/?page=1
>see also Exhibition press release / teacher info
~The world is getting smaller yet people are growing bigger and bigger! There are more giants among now us then thoughout history and legend.
by way of Aberrant News
YouTube: Interrogation Day 283
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siWc46l0eXg
Housewarming Party
"Come see our new home on the web (http://www.beikey.com) while the paint is still fresh. The renovation is (by and large) finished. We’ve cleared out the old mess, rearranged the furniture and changed the wallpaper. Sit down (plenty of chairs inside the museum rooms), there’s hot drinks in the thermos flasks in the trichromie kitchen, grab a bite from the urban agriculture gardens and if you need to find the toilet: there’s one at De Pont and one over at inside houses. Oh, and you can hang up your coat at !Upwardly Mobile. All we need now is some music to get the party started!"
October 22, 2007
Microfiction
the mini site http://microfiction.rumble.sy2.com/>
from Ethereal Code
~There are many things I need to tell you, but they're not about me. They're never about me.
[photo/words Stubbornson/ not from Microfiction]
The Democrats' year of living disastrously
article/op-ed: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/22/Democrats/index.html by Chris Floyd | Salon/Empire Burlesque
thanks Conscientious
[photo not with above]
Truth is the enemy; truth is to be destroyed. To attempt to speak the truth on any subject of importance requires a deep reserve of determination, for to speak the truth requires that one first sweep away an infinite number of rationalizations, false alternatives, and numerous other failures of logic and the most rudimentary forms of thought -- as well as the endless lies. On that single occasion in a thousand or a million when a person overcomes these barriers and speaks the truth, he or she discovers an additional, terrible truth: almost no one wants to hear it. This is how we live today: lies are the staple of our diet. Without them, we would die, certainly in psychological terms." from Arthur Silber Final Descent
October 21, 2007
Pentagon Pushes For ‘High-Profile’ Convictions Of Detainees Ahead Of ‘08 Elections
...pressure to pursue cases that were deemed “sexy” over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go. […]
“There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up"...
story | Think Progress
Council of Europe opposes creationism in school
...European schools should "resist presentation of creationist ideas in any discipline other than religion." It said the "intelligent design" view defended by some United States conservatives was an updated version of creationism.
October 20, 2007
Creative Capital Foundation
Creative Capital, a New York City-based nonprofit organization, acts as a catalyst for the development of adventurous and imaginative ideas by supporting artists who pursue innovation in form and/or content in the performing and visual arts, film and video, and in emerging fields. We are committed to working in partnership with the artists whom we fund, providing advisory services and professional development assistance along with multi-faceted financial aid and promotional support throughout the life of each Creative Capital project.
info. http://www.creative-capital.org/
Art: Animated Painting
The works on display show two predominant approaches in animation. While some artists are maintaining the practice of handmade images, which is immersed in styles of traditional drawing and painting or forms of conventional animation, other artists are working with live action sources that are either self-generated or taken from popular culture and then digitally recoded into a painterly style
Video Hang Up
The popularity of narrative video work owes much to its historical relationship to experimental film, but installed in a gallery on mounted screens or projected on the wall, the medium begins to have more in common with painting than cinema. This kinship bears out in much of the work in 'Animated Painting,' a straightforwardly titled exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art, which runs through January 13. A greatest-hits of recent work--most from the last five years--that incorporates traditional illustration and painting techniques, the show features the Barnstormers, Sadie Benning, Jeremy Blake, Serge Onnen, and others, crossing paper and canvas approaches with the conventions of small-screen animation. Some are literally grounded in handmade images. William Kentridge's 2003-04 'Tide Table' turns sketches into an animated film, subsequently transferred to video and screened on a monitor, telling the story of a white industrialist wandering through social realities of! South Africa, and Robin Rhode's 'Harvest' shows the artist watering a stand of illuminated lines growing in stop motion. Others take up the painterly attributes of digital media. Takeshi Murata's 'Untitled (Pink Dot)' from 2006 samples footage from 'Rambo, First Blood,' twisting violent moments into pixilated spasms and melting images—all while a hypnotic pink pupil dilates in the foreground. Several works in the show can be previewed in a television-spot-style montage on the museum's Web site, but perhaps realizing that the installation as much as the processes underpinning the work ties video to other media not bound to the theater, the SDMA has enlisted Wit Pimkanchanapong, who also contributes work to the show, to design the exhibition space. - William Hanley | Rhizome
http://www.sdmart.org/exhibition-animated-painting.html
[Stone Flag by Robin Rhode not with exhibit(?)]
YouTube: 14 Characteristics of Fascism
http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/10/14-characteristics-of-fascism.html | Welcome to Pottersville
thanks Conscientious
~Most people I know have no problems with America's neo-con, neo-liberal fascism. Until ordinary people begin blurting out in conversation this 'f-word' in horror and surprise along with journalists and spotlighted pet-loving celebrities, far be it from me to spoil the party. I'm tired of being on the fringes of America's New World Order. I may never be able to afford the dream they're sold gift-wrapped in flags from their secret-draped coffins but I can proudly wave the flag, wear lapel-pins and mouthe as well as any real American this dream is all I ever dream about too.
[illus. not with above]
October 19, 2007
Art: MOMA Collection
Browse and Search the Online Collection
http://www.moma.org/collection/search.php
example
Edward Ruscha. (American, born 1937). The "E" Drawing. 1993. Synthetic polymer paint on paper, 13 x 18" (33 x 45.7 cm). Date: 1993 large(r)
~Many artists represented by a few of their works. For fast results 'browse the artists index'.
>DADABASE: MOMA's library biblio. search http://library.moma.org/webvoy.htm
Photography: John Stezaker
Marriage I
a few other "Marriage" portraits | Saatchi Gallery
~"I love you so much I could absorb you. I could just absorb you right up."
Teacher Training Videos
General Teacher Training Videos created by Russell Stannard:
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/
Photography John S. Kiewit Collection
from Ghost Towns
more http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/Kiewit/Kiewit_introduction.html | Department of Special Collections University of California Santa Barbara Library
Army Weapon Systems, 2007-2008
Earlier this year, the U.S. Army updated its Handbook on Weapon Systems. A copy of that illustrated and annotated catalog is now available online.
Along with basic system data, each entry includes information about program contractors and foreign military sales, and other useful reference material.
See "2007-2008 Army Weapon Systems." http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/wsh2007/index.html
via Secrecy News
~Some examples of the spending power of an institution as yet untouched by the tax-cutting small government fiscally responsible 'grown-ups' of America's two major politically parties.
Is it safe yet?
October 18, 2007
Chicano Art Digital Image Collection
CEMA: California Ethic & Multicultural Archives
UCSB Library
for example
Artist: Artist Unknown
Title: (title unknown)
Date: n.d.
Media:
Art Center: Galeria de la Raza
Slide Photography by: Yolanda M. Lopez
no. of slides: 16.
Comments: From Magical Visions, Contemporary Mexican Photography Exhibition at Galería de la Raza, 2851 24th Street, San Francisco, CA (July 19-August 13, 1988).
more selected photographs
other CEMA Chicano art images http://cemaweb.library.ucsb.edu/digitalArchives.html
>related scroll for List of Guides in the Chicano/Latino Collections:
http://cemaweb.library.ucsb.edu/listguides.html
"Knowledge Management" at In-Q-tel
From Fortune 500 companies to academia to government offices, most modern organizations continually collect and store large amounts of data. Stacks of paper have been replaced by stacks of disks containing gigabytes of email, text documents, relational database records, images, multimedia clips, geospatial data and more — all in different formats, typically residing in disparate repositories.
In-Q-Tel is interested in leading-edge technologies that derive knowledge or insight from data repositories and streams, including both structured and unstructured data, through the organization, retrieval, and presentation of relevant information. We are also closely tracking the significant strides being made in the development of Collaborative Environments, which enable data analysts to better share the results of their efforts.
Management systems share several common needs with CIA technology users, including:
+technologies that derive structure and content from unstructured data
+tools that search and automatically serve content relevant to users, ideally in relation to a known user profile or current task (i.e., personalization)
+tools that enable users with no programming experience to quickly and easily develop lightweight applications "on the fly" for specific tasks
+multi-media analysis and authoring tools
blurb from In-Q-tel's Web site http://www.in-q-tel.org/tech/km.html
What is Amberview?
The Amber View Project is a pilot biometrics program under development by the West Virginia High Technology Consortium (WVHTC) Foundation in Fairmont, West Virginia and is designed to aid in the recovery of missing or abducted children.
This coordinated program will work in collaboration with the state and national Amber Alert programs and will demonstrate the ability to mass broadcast a digital, three-dimensional (3D) facial image of a missing child to law enforcement officials, media organizations, the private sector and other sources within minutes of an official Amber Alert.
~According to a tv report enrollment in the Amberview project is being offered to the children attending the University of West Virginia, the first university in the US to do so. No mention is made if students of the UWV are more often abducted or missing then students of other US colleges and universities. On the face of it the Amberview Project doesn't seem to be cost effective, (federal funds are offsetting initial costs) but depending upon how many children make the effort to have their photographs and personal data collected by the authorities, it promises to be faster then requesting photos and info. from family, friends, dorm rooms and yearbooks.
October 17, 2007
PBS: Independent Lens
a film festival in your living room
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/
NSA SIGINT Seminars for the Press
Dubbed "SIGINT 101," using the NSA's shorthand for signals intelligence, the seminar was presented "a handful of times" between approximately 2002 and 2004, an agency spokeswoman, Marci Green, confirmed...
SIGINT Course Module http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/docs/seminar.pdf
from Secrecy News
~Don't most American journalists work at least part-time for one secret security agency or another? The NSA is clarifying the standards, or introducing new press rules for the dozens of other secret bureacracies?
[photo not with above]
Art: "Code: Survey", a project by renée green
Transmiting California
One of the most politically engaged works currently on view at the Istanbul Biennial is Rene Green's 2004-06 'Code: Survey,' commissioned by the California Department of Transportation. The starting point of the project is the fact that 'California is a specific and an imaginary location that can be perceived as a giant transmitter. It consists of dream factories, many modes of transport and a constant transmission of electronic signals.' However, as Green asks, 'amidst this production and diffusion, what else occurs?' In order to address this problem, Green has developed a powerful examination of today's global flux of people and goods by bringing together diverse documentary sources on geography in general, and contemporary individual and collective uses of the territory in particular. In Los Angeles, at the California Department of Transportation District 7 Headquarters Building, Green has installed 168 one-foot-square glass panels containing photographic, graphic, a! nd typographic materials related to this theme. In Istanbul, prominence is given to the online installment of the piece, with a set of computers allowing the viewer to explore a variety of visual and textual information--divided into images, codes, and keywords--that further consider this issue. As someone once put it, 'what emerges from this engagement with data, space, and time allows one to... question utopian claims of freedom associated with mobility.' Green thus continues her investigation into the gaps and shifts existing between the public and the private spheres and how these construct the prevailing visions of the world. - Miguel Amado | Rhizome
http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist07/code_survey/intro
~Mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile... mobile.
October 16, 2007
Regulating Your Second Life: Defamation in Virtual Worlds
link to pdf http://www.docuticker.com/?p=17106 | Brooklyn Law Review (via SSRN) via Docuticker
US weathers Beijing's fury as Bush attends ceremony with Dalai Lama
Chinese officials...warned that the spectacle of President Bush standing by the side of the Dalai Lama as he is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour could seriously damage relations with Beijing.
..today's award ceremony will mark the first time Mr Bush, or any other serving US president, has appeared in public with the Tibetan leader, and the White House trod very carefully yesterday to try to minimise the embarrassment to China
Mr Fratto (the White House deputy press secretary)..said the White House would not release photographs or other information about the meeting.
~No mention is made of other Medal of Honor recepients who were also forbidden from having their photographs taken with the preciding president.
This file handout photo released by the White House 10 September, 2003 shows US President George W. Bush (R) welcoming the spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, to the White House... @
Sensor Rejected Before Minn. Bridge Fell
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A consultant for the state Transportation Department recommended installing high-tech sensors to detect cracking on critical sections of an interstate bridge less than a year before the span collapsed, killing 13 people, records show.
In the years leading up to the collapse, the state DOT and private consultants performed numerous evaluations and inspections of the bridge that raised concerns about its condition. The DOT contracted with URS Corp. in 2003 to perform a more thorough analysis of fatigue in the bridge support structure.
The company indicated in its study of the bridge between 2004 and 2006 that there were 20 fracture critical truss beams on the bridge — those considered to be "the most susceptible locations for crack initiations."
The URS study recommended an acoustic emission monitoring system that included the capability of alerting the state DOT immediately about specific locations on the bridge "where unusual signals are detected indicating the possibility of steel cracking."
The cost of installing the monitors in a specific area of a bridge, as was proposed by URS, would cost between $20,000 to $40,000.. The devices are used on some bridges around the country but are not yet common...
...DOT inspectors instead utilized ultrasonic testing, which he (Dan Dorgan, a state bridge engineer) called a "proven means of actually detecting cracks."
[...the agency ultimately went with other kinds of inspections because there were no signs of cracking on bridge trusses, said Dan Dorgan, a state bridge engineer.
"In the absence of cracks, we had no locations to monitor or information to orient monitors for crack detection," Dorgan wrote in response to written questions from The Associated Press.]
~Hindsight is 20/20. Invest a lump sum of tax dollars into a new as yet unproven system in 2006 or in this worst case amortize the court costs and lawsuit settlements over at least a ten year period.
I don't think this bridge needed sensors. I've a feeling the on-site (on-sight ) bridge inspectors did their job. Unfortunately the bureacrats deciding what should or should not be repaired may not've had the engineering know-how to judge the seriousness of their reports or the access to the political appointees(?) who hand out the DOT contracts.
Not a bad idea for a made-for-tv-movie: old-fashioned political cronyism under the guise of the philosophy of small gov't responsible for 13 deaths. How many families destroyed or changed forever? Kinda like Silkwood but within the suburban everyman commuter milieu. Lots of scenes of drivers and victims unknowingly racing the clock; loved ones impatiently waiting in modest kitchens, kitchenettes; seeing the disaster first on their small tvs. Hurried phone calls to co-workers, the red cross, priests, neighbors, lovers, ex's, estranged parents, siblings, etc. Then the emergency room with medical and personal conflicts; bewildered children in their newly wdowed parents arms, wrapped around their legs, then as if on cue, grief is lifted for a moment while the papers for organ donations are signed by all.
We see in the next instant a helicopter on the roof of the hospital with a heart on its way to Newark, a lung to Princeton, a part of a liver to Atlantic City, a skin graft to Trenton.
Our loved ones live on. Ultimately there is hope. In the final scene from inside the Governor's Mansion we see a besotted man alone in a leather bound chair attempting to build on top of a hastily cleared mahogany desk a house, or is a bridge, of cards.
October 15, 2007
DARPA Testing Satellite Image Recognition System
Called Object Recognition via Brain-Inspired Technology (ORBIT), the system will fuse commercial airborne EO and LIDAR sensor data (Wikis LIDAR article)into a three-dimensional, photo-realistic model of the landscape.
item /link | Slashdot
[illus not from above\ more google colleced LIDAR images]
Worst Polluted Places List
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20745214 with photos
~Making a 'polluted places list' is a d.i.y. project one can do for one's own community.
I'm thinking of nearby places created without individual humans in mind--that is designed for maximum profit-taking--accessable only to machines, or not at all, where trees and most plants can't or won't grow.
I'm not talking about another Chernobyl, but those local areas off our mental maps where no one would care to walk (or look at, or visit or explore) or think about walking. Sites one looks around, edits in the landscape, in our notions of beautiful town, village green, forest view.
Congo Pygmies Go High-Tech to Protect Forest Home
As recently reported by the National Geographic Society
With training and technology provided by the trust, logging company Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB) owned by Denmark's DLH group, and other international partners, the Mbendjeles are using the GPS (Global Positioning System) to mark out forest areas and even specific trees they want preserved.
"The sets have icons on them, so they don't have to be able to read and write. They basically go out and say OK, click, here is a sacred site, and a GPS point is taken and links up to the satellite," (Scott) Poynton, (executive director of the Tropical Forest Trust) said...
"They can wander through the forest and map all of the areas - the tombs of their ancestors, hunting grounds, sacred areas, water holes, areas of medicinal plants - these are all captured on GPS points, all downloaded on the computer," he added.
"And suddenly, you've got a map."
~No magazine ads with photos of pygmies in loin cloths carrying these devices? I wonder what the humidity does to its electronic components. Must they regularly fire-up the gas generator to rechange the batteries, or does FedEx supply fresh ones as needed? Are there pygmy geeks who download the gps data to a community computer or does the logging company employ anthropologists to live with them and maintain (reward, manage, pay for) their 'sacred' foraging/mapping?
Anything of value anywhere on earth will be managed. There's no other way to save it. (Who manages the managers?)
[photo via google\ National Geo.]
October 14, 2007
Independent Films & Video LInks
from WTTW Channel 11 Chicago
>for example: Chicago's "Image Union" huge Artists' Work & Biblio.: http://people.wcsu.edu/mccarneyh/fva/navigate/artists_2.html
and the Video Data Bank: http://www.vdb.org/
also the P.O.V.schedule
more film & video links http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=40,5
Sick People
~I've been thinking about sick people: wondering just how many living among us are carrying extra-loads of pain, grief, worry, expense and the experiences of bizarre bodily accomodations to dangerous drugs and medical procedures. The sick undoubtedly are the largest and most invisible demographic. The sick don't have their own sitcoms, reality tv shows, super-models or rock lyricists. However I imagine their names and consumer information appear in more commericial and medical databases then the healthy.
[photos defense link]
Iraq's displaced people nightmare
The scale of the overall displacement is unprecedented in the modern history of the Middle East.
There are now an estimated four million Iraqis who have been forced to flee their homes, and the numbers continue to rise, according to the UN refugee agency.
Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen
Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows.
"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience.
story | MSNBC
>related European Robotics Research Network EURON
for example: Call for Papers for Journal of Autonomous Robots Special Issue on "Internet and Online Robots"
Possible Topics:
* Applications: Medical, educational, industrial; Space,
* Remote science and exploration; Laboratory assistants,
* Search and rescue, environment monitoring and protection.
* Systems components, technology and integration.
* Networking, multimedia and visualisation methods and tools.
* Networks and protocols for Internet Robots.
* Component and multi-agent technologies and systems.
* Visualisation and modelling of the remote environment.
* Online Robot laboratories.
* Robot architectures for Online Robots.
* Man-machine interfaces, devices and environments.
* Multi-user applications and human-robot systems.
* User models and application views.
* Adapting/accommodating novice and expert users.
* Acquiring user profiles.
* Access methods and controls, guarded command and control.
* Internet robots in computer supported cooperative working.
* Quality of service guarantees.
* Safety and security.
* User experience, benefits and quality of life
from Regular Reviews
more via Networked Robots index: http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/dzsong/tc/index.html
EURON Home page http://www.cas.kth.se/EURON/
~Marriage with robots would be inevitable because every man has the urge to legally share financial assets with the (varied) objects of their affection. We're suckers when it comes to showing the world how proud we are of the people, animals and things we schtup.
My artificial partner is already programmed to refuse the "ultimate servo sashay" until it identifies a gold band on an extension pincer and its bin number on the proper forms along with the bin numbers of two court appointed witnesses.
[photo not with above]
October 13, 2007
Book TV: iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era"
about the CSpan 2 program:
Author: Mark Andrejevic
At an event at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, Mark Andrejevic explains how corporations gather information about consumers by monitoring our use of club cards, online vendors, cell phones, TiVo, and Google. He warns that this constant surveillance poses threats to citizens, who are not able to access or verify the information that has been gathered about them.
Digital Photo Reconstruction Leads to Worldwide Manhunt
Although the original photographs had been digitally altered by him or his accomplices to disguise his face, specialists from the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) in Germany working with INTERPOL’s Trafficking in Human Beings unit have been able to produce an identifiable picture.
Despite extensive global efforts to identify and locate this individual through INTERPOL’s network of 186 National Central Bureaus and specialist units, the man’s identity and nationality still remain unknown.
press release | Danger Room
October 12, 2007
Inside the Army's Radiological Weapon Research
In one of the longest-held secrets of the Cold War, the U.S. Army explored the potential for using radioactive poisons to assassinate 'important individuals' such as military or civilian leaders," according to newly declassified documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The documents give no indication whether a radiological weapon for targeting high-ranking individuals was ever used or even developed by the United States. They leave unclear how far the Army project went...The broader effort on offensive uses of radiological warfare apparently died by about 1954, at least in part because of the Defense Department's conviction that nuclear weapons were a better bet...
[The M29 155mm (Heavy) Davy Crockett Launcher is pictured tripod-mounted in the display photo above\ http://www.guntruck.com/DavyCrockett.html]
blog entry\ with links : http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/inside-the-army.html
Information Sharing, By Hook or By Crook
The disclosure of a clandestine network of U.S. military officers that diverted classified documents from military agencies and illegally provided them to law enforcement agencies serves as a vivid reminder that improved information sharing within the government is a goal that has still not been achieved.
Marine Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz said patriotism motivated him to join a spy ring, smuggle secret files from Camp Pendleton and give them to law enforcement officers for anti-terrorism work in Southern California,"...
"...bureaucratic walls erected by the military and civilian agencies were hampering intelligence sharing and coordination, making the nation more vulnerable to terrorists."
This is of course a self-serving story, and it doesn't explain the stolen weapons or steroids found along with the pilfered documents by military investigators.
But neither is there any evidence so far of espionage on behalf of a foreign power, or any indication of a financial motive in stealing the records.
story | Secrecy News
[photo not with above]
Burmese Balloons
"Successful repression of a mass nonviolent movement does not consist, as the generals would have us believe, of simply creating the appearance of maintaining control. Effective repression can only be measured by the degree to which it has succeeded in undermining the people's will to resist. And by that criterion, the junta seems to be faltering.
To illustrate:
Pro-democracy groups report that on Tuesday in Thingangyun Township, sixty helium balloons carrying thirty posters were released, each of which had the face of General Than Shwe with an accompanying swastika and the word "Butcher" above his photo.
from story
Burma's Struggle: The Avowed Against the "Atheists | TruthOut
AFP - Fri Oct 12, 4:08 AM ET
A Filipino child holding a protest balloon, joins other protestors in a rally outside the Chinese embassy in Manila to denounce China's suppot to Myanmar's military rulers. The UN Security Council slammed the ruling junta in Myanmar over its violent crackdown on mass protests and urged it to open talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi(AFP/Luis Liwang) Myanmar Protests Slide Show | Yahoo
~I was unable to find the photos of the "Butcher General Shwe" described above.
-Perhaps so little news ever comes from Thingangyun Township that the world's newswires have no reliable means to verify stories and photos not filed by their own jounalists? If a jounalist's not on the scene, it might not have happened?
-That internet enabled or enhanced communications between parts of Myanmar is spotty at the best of times, impossible during these protests; further hindering from where and which sorts of images might find their way onto the newswires?
-The Myanmar images shown to us by the media are screened not only by photo editors in France, Britain, the US etc. but by a well organized Burmese press corp choosing how best to show-off their struggle and the "Butcher Shwe" balloon photos didn't make the cut?
-AFP or AP journalists have exclusive rights to what gets pubished from Myanmar?
-Because local reporters can and will be imprisonedd while foreign reporters will simply be sent home?
- Because it's dangerous for reporters who stray too far from the capital's "Four Seasons" and the other hotels?
- Because so few foreign reporters speak the langauge, and fewer yet the regional dialects, and it's dangeous for translators too, so why try?
-The Butcher of Shwe ballloon photos weren't as visually stimulating as described?
-Swastika's are verboten (confusing to Buddhists)?
-This dictator is already the friend of those nations which run the major newswires?
-It was over before it started, why show the world hateful images that may discourage tourism?
Rowling sues Indian festival for building replica of Hogwarts Castle
Rowling and her publishers Bloomsbury are seeking two million rupees (50,000 dollars) from the organisers constructing an elaborate castle from canvas and papier mache in Kolkata for the upcoming Durga Puja festival, court officials said.
What we are building is not a violation of copyright act anywhere in the world because it's a religious festival and has nothing to do with money-making," Biswas told AFP.
"It's just a theme ...We have also modelled the Titanic and no-one sued us," he (another organiser, Robin Mukherjee) said
story | AP/Yahoo
PBS: "Faces of Culture"
Cultural Anthropology
free Real time videos(??) http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/cummiskclasses/faces_of_culture.htm
"Faces of Culture helps students . . .
Understand and appreciate the concept of culture, from the perspective of anthropologists, as the adaptive mechanism that provides for survival of the human species.
Recognize underlying similarities as well as the wide range and variability of human cultures.
Appreciate that there are a number of valid "cultural solutions" to living on earth.
Understand the relationship between culture and the individual.
Understand the factors involved in cultural change.
Gain a broad cross-cultural background against which to view their own culture as well as contemporary social problems. "
more info & Synopsis for 26 programs with links to transcripts: http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1604/video/Faces.html
October 11, 2007
BBCs Horizon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/index.shtml
~I saw a cool Horizon documentary the other night on climate change in Peru. The Lost Civilization of Peru
They filmed scientists doing and seeing various things in a number a different locales: coastal desert, ancient ruins, and glaciers throughout Peru. I almost forgot that the narrator never referred to how the data they collected was to be used to reverse the environnmetal degradation they were documenting. I'm guessing papers were written, funding applications were filed, conferences were attended and plans for future research with larger crews, more scientists and better instrumentation are being made.
Documentaries: Horizon International
http://www.horizoninternationaltv.org/
Solutions Site Index http://www.solutions-site.org/links/
~I couldn't find Horizons International online programs or its broadcast tv schedule but the Solutions Site Index gave me hope.
The world's scientists and their ever accumulating glaciers of data on global warming will soon beat, or at very least wrestle to a standstill most of the problems associated with this man-made phenomena. You wait and see. Have faith and never stop believing.
[photo not with above]
PBS Documentaries: "Wide Angle"
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/
Summer 2007 Show Finder:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/finder.html
Getting Ready for Digital Cartridges
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
"The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), Library of Congress, has finalized the cartridge design and is currently preparing to contract for production…Full production of the cartridge is slated to begin in the spring of 2008. NLS anticipates producing 17,500 cartridges in the initial run and between one to two million cartridges each year into the future. Libraries within the NLS network, as well as other organizations, will be able to buy blank cartridges to record local or specialty books for their readers. Blank cartridges will be available once full production starts...
press release | ResourceShelf
Mailing Address Verification Databases; Zip Codes, & More
"When sending mail or packages it’s crucial to have the correct address, postal/Zip Code, etc.
Here are three databases that might help. Of course, the caveat, that no dbase is always perfect..."
link to links:
http://www.resourceshelf.com/2007/10/11/mailing-address-verification-databases/
~Yet more examples of how much of who (i.e. where) we are is 'out there'.
Before my credit limit returns to absolute zero I hope to have my personal information collected in the most prestigious databases.
Status and power are no longer predicted by 'who you know'; there are databases automatically gathering the most accurate up-to-the-minute information on the world's real movers and shakers.
[photo not with above]
October 10, 2007
Hints of 'Extreme' teenagers found in Norway
~Haven't advertisers found profitable use for the term "extreme teenagers": as in "Mountain Dew for extreme teeenagers only?" No need to mention Norway in the ad copy.
new tools to assess health risks from chemicals
Determining how thousands of chemicals found in the environment may be interacting with the genes in your body to cause disease is becoming easier because of a new field of science called toxicogenomics.
To read or order the “Applications of Toxicogenomic Technologies to Predictive Toxicology and Assessment” report, please visit http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12037.
press release | Eureka Alert
>report in brief (pdf) http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/toxicogenomic_technologies_final.pdf
~"Plastics Benjamin, plastics."
[photo Ars Electronica\ not with above]
Church of England Threatens to Sue Sony
The Church of England has threatened to sue Sony over its portrayal of the Manchester Cathedral in a video game level involving a shootout between human resistance fighters and an invading alien force.
>also Sony apologizes for setting video-game shootout in Manchester Cathedral
Sony has said it's sorry for using an Anglican cathedral as a background for a bloody shootout in a video game--but it doesn't have any plans to withdraw the game anytime soon.
~Should we assume that the licensing-free virtual image creation and exploitation of some buildings and locales will prove more problematic for game creators in the near future? Maybe if next time the game manufacturers give free games to everyone affliated with those organizations which've maintained an interest in the historical preservation of these rad places?
(I'ld like to see a game level featuring American Special Ops destroying radical Muslims using The Rock and the crowds in Mecca as the virtual scene during their month of pilgrimage.)
Compared to music copywrite infringement it's easier to virtually copy and use a recorded image or an actual place? (As opposed to a recorded or real-time piece of music?)
Google Search: Spitting-Image.net Archives June 2007
http://www.spitting-image.net/archives/2007_06.html
[snapshot cieciel\ not taken in June]
October 09, 2007
Google Image Search: Olmec
[olmec head mexico city]
>also: ...the state of Veracruz has commissioned faithful replicas of the heads and placed them in different cities around the globe. Through the sponsorship of Harry S. Parker III, City College of San Francisco has been selected as a recipient of one of the heads.
article | City College of SF Library (2004)
more google image olmec search results
~Some people imagine they've an 'angel on their shoulder'. Our town's Olmec head is like that and more.
Epigraphy Forum Related Websites
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6726/websites.htm
October 08, 2007
Analysis of Casino Design
[May 30, 2007]
Other features of the casino, including the music, carpeting, and even the air conditioning system, are manipulated to the casino’s advantage.... It has even been reported that casinos have attempted to manipulate the air circulation in order to affect the behavior of gamblers. They may add extra oxygen to the circulation to keep gamblers more alert, or even add pheromones that make people feel more relaxed and at ease. Casinos vehemently deny these allegations; however, companies marketing these technologies do exist and do make sales to casinos. Enhanced Air Technologies, a Vancouver-based company that markets a pheromone air-circulation system, states that the technology was initially developed upon request from a Las Vegas casino. According to Nigel Malkin, EAT’s director of development, “The compound doesn't cause consumers to get into a spending frenzy so much as it causes them feel more at ease in an environment and more receptive to sales messages.”
from 10 things 2007 a class with Michael Shanks about design
related fom 2004 LoveScent Forums' discussion on phermones
http://www.pherolibrary.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-10957.html
>also from 2004: "Enhanced Air Technologies decided to remove our Commecaire pheromone products from the market voluntarily in January of this year (2004), only two weeks after our official product launch.While the Commercaire product is a harmless blend of naturally occurring pheromones, we had not foreseen how controversial the product would be. Nor had we foreseen some of the potential negative ramifications or potential misuses of our product line by various industries. Finally, a few concerned consumers and consumer groups contacted us to raise concerns that we shared about potential misuse of our products.
more: http://www.pherolibrary.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10957
~As mentioned on network tv.
Commercaire simply changed its marketing strategy, or did they really stop producing phermones for casinos and other businesses?
(He had the air about him of a Vegas tourist: bankrupt but upbeat, ya'know?)
http://www.spitting-image.net/archives/007084.html
by way of a google search: spitting-image.net casino
Wayback Spitting-Image.net
~Spitting Images pre-Sept. 2007 archive is kaput. However to enjoy a taste if not the full-bloodied flavor of its past try clicking the go button on this Wayback Machine page: (More than half of Spitting Images traffic came from archive searches?)
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=http%3A%2F%2Fspitting-image.net&server=se
Note the url when attempting Wayback Machine searches. I typed SIs so seldom, I had to look it up, yet the machines seem to have some use for it.
[photo from "Crime & Punishment": http://www.flickr.com/photos/hab3045/sets/72157601380954383 by way of Consumptive]
Photocaption Nonsequitur
~Nothing but 'ayes' from our national security agencies. A sentiment if not a yet a reality shared by the men and women who protect and serve us as our local police.
Boeing robo-chopper for DARPA's super-spyeye
...an all-seeing insect-style compound bugeye able to simultaneously look at many different things. ...dubbed ARGUS-IS...
It's difficult to put lots of flying robots into the same airspace at once, even if there are enough to watch everything, so increased numbers aren't the answer.
... deploying a "Gigapixel" wide-angle sensor which can monitor at least 50 places in full detail simultaneously, perhaps satisfying the needs of many different customers on the ground. Just one ARGUS-IS platform could monitor a whole district of Baghdad for the US military, or simultaneously spy on many different places in an American town for all the various cops, spooks or whoever. Some processing would be carried out in the aircraft, and then the info would be sent down to a ground station for further processing and distribution...
Boeing has a $6.3m contract to provide an A-160T whisper-mode robochopper for the ARGUS-IS demo phase...
~I'm not clear on the concept. I can appreciate (the Pentagon insisting) if one camera/sensor is good fifty cameras would be fify times better. But why wouldn't human operators be useful in choosing for example what images to follow up on or where and when to send the flying robots? There are advances in surveillance processing that now go beyond what human beings are capable of doing? Maybe its the required persistent surveillance that makes this system a necessity, not its super-human features. Human eyes get tired.
UK: Boy in Court on Terror Charges
The 17-year-old, who was arrested in the Dewsbury area of West Yorkshire on Monday, was given bail after a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court.
It is alleged he had a copy of the "Anarchists' Cookbook", containing instructions on how to make home-made explosives.
item | BBC
~So much for the 'nanny state'. Who knew the Brits fear and hate their teens almost as much as we Americans do? I guessing these young men have never attended UKs better schools with their level playing fields. (Because if they had this incident would never had made the news?)
'Howl' too hot to hear
Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's Beat-era poem "Howl" was not obscene. Yet today, a New York public broadcasting station (... listener-supported radio station WBAI...) decided not to air the poem, fearing that the Federal Communications Commission will find it indecent and crush the network with crippling fines.
story via Unknown News
link to poem http://www.everyday-beat.org/ginsberg/poems/howl.txt
~Are the anti-pc conservatives mounting a campaign against this infringement of free-speech rights? The talking mannikins on CNN & Fox have nothing to say so far.
Is it homophobic to observe that there was a time that gays (pre-gays?) could speak to all of us, gays & straights alike? But no more; never again?
Anti-Crime Unit To Carry Submachine Guns On Central Fla. Streets
"(It's) a simple concept: Where there's drugs, there's going to be guns," Orange County sheriff's Cmdr. Al Rollins said.
"(There was an incident with) an AK-47 and another firearm," Orange County sheriff's Sgt. Paul Smalley said.
The county's tactical anti-crime unit will purchase 40 H&K UMP 45 weapons. The submachine guns are compact, quicker and more powerful than current weapons
press release: http://www.local6.com/news/14224055/detail.html
by way of Unknown News
Gallery: Dream Anatomy
National Library of Medicine
Over the centuries anatomy has become a visual vocabulary of realism. We regard the anatomical body as our inner reality, a medium through which we imagine society, culture and the human condition.
Drawn mainly from the collections of the National Library of Medicine, Dream Anatomy shows off the anatomical imagination in some of its most astonishing incarnations, from 1500 to the present.
Anatomie des parties de la génération de l’homme et de la femme
Paris, 1773. Colored mezzotint. National Library of Medicine.
Jacques Fabien Gautier D’Agoty (1717-1785) [author/artist/printer]
The grotesquerie of subject matter, stiffness of the figure, and eccentric arrangement of body parts make for a characteristic dreaminess that eerily anticipates 20th-century modernism. @
more illustrations http://www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy/da_gallery.html
exhibit intro.. etc. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy/index.html (2006)
October 07, 2007
Photocaption Non Sequitur
~The patient has been observed demonstrating belief in a higher power.
List: Rare Disease Database
list http://www.rarediseases.org/search/rdblist.html
search http://www.rarediseases.org/search/rdbsearch.html (reports & articles sre for sale)
for more info see the National Organization for Rare Diseases :http://www.rarediseases.org/
~In time with the advances in genetic research and the increased personalizaton of drug/chemo and gene therapies won't most diseases be 'rare' diseases?
Article: "Photography through the Web - Part 2"
http://www.freepint.com/issues/160801.htm?issue=94#feature
by Guy Aron | Free Pint (16 August 2001)
~With hyperlinks.
Lifestyles: News of the Weird
Lead Story
* Ralph Whittington, 57, retired in 2000 as curator of the main
reading room at the Library of Congress but was better known as
the "King of Porn" for his private collection that he recently sold
(500 boxes' worth) to the Museum of Sex in New York City.
Whittington's home (which he shares with his mother, after his
wife left him) was, before the sale, "packed to the rafters," said the
Museum's buyer, to the Washington Post in August. "Downstairs,
you had to walk sideways to get through the rooms." Said Mom,
"It's something he loves. You see men his age going to bars or on
dope. But he [was] home day and night [indexing and cross-
referencing]. That [gave] me peace of mind." [Washington Post,
8-24-07]
Fetishes on Parade:
A 50-year-old man was detained by police in August after complaints at Disneyland near Paris. Witnesses said the man had sprinkled itching powder on young children so that he could video-record them scratching themselves.
WEIRDNUZ.M026 (News of the Weird), October 7, 2007) by Chuck Shepherd
Army Denies Education Benefits
Approximately 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard recently returned home after serving multiple tours of duty in Iraq. They served 22 months — “longer than any other ground combat unit” — received nine fatalities, and were awarded dozens of Purple Hearts.
But the Army wrote the orders for 1,162 of these soldiers for 729 days, making them ineligible for full educational benefits under the GI Bill, which requires written orders saying they were deployed for 730 days or more. These soldiers were shorted more than $200 per month for college.
press release | Think Progress
by way of Daily Weird
~Isn't this the way Republicans do business? My brother was let go after years from his last job right before becoming fully vetted in the companies' retirement plan. No one wants gov't interference in how corporations compensate their employees, that would be socialism.
Lost Films
The pages below show prints I made from processing film I found in old cameras. You are seeing them for the first time as they were lost by the photographers that took these images.
http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm
~Where do our forgotten snapshots go? Do medical examiners performing autopsy's rountinely find rolls of unprocessed film stuffed in cavities around the hearts of the recently deceased? What about the photos we wish we had taken? Along with those which are more vivid in our imagination then we'ld ever be able to put on film?
October 06, 2007
Court Won't Declare Chimp a Person
Austria: Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless.
The animal rights group has been pressing to get Pan declared a "person" so a guardian can be appointed to look out for his interests.
~In other words these activists can't afford to buy the chimps?
Pair ties the knot in Wal-Mart lawn and garden section
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) ...Employees Chet Eldridge and Danna Hornback tied the knot Thursday amid the retailer's flowers, shrubs and lawn chairs.
~Hope, promise and corporate largesse: does it get any better than that?
Now if WalMart built or somewhat furnished a house as a wedding present for these two...
Scans reveal lost gravestone text
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon university are making high resolution 3D scans of tombstones to reveal the carved patterns in the stone.
A computer matches the patterns to a database of signature carvings which reveals the words.
Experienced archaeologists have lots of accumulated pattern descriptions.
Dr Cai said: "We may use the technology for the future UAVs (Unmanned Aviation vehicles) to detect ground signatures of ancient ruins and help medical doctors to diagnose patients' well-being through tongue inspection."
The technology could also be used to predict a possible tsunami by examining the patterns on the surface of the world's oceans.
press release | BBC
~As the 3D scanner and I stare upon your beautiful face I see the smallest tremor of the muscles of your cheek.
October 05, 2007
Magazine: The Mex Files
http://mexfiles.wordpress.com/
~I'm embarrassed how a certain journalistic format and style can clarify concepts and issues that for years I obscured by my racist/non-racist (love/hate) need for the exotic and the mysterious. With Mexicos millions living their lives I had locked my ideas about a nation's poiltics and activities into a part of the world forever incompehensible: creating for what pirpose a land right on America's borders "where here be dragons".
Such is the power of Mexico on my imagination, I would be lost and never found the second the American flag on the border or at the airport disappeared from the car's rear-view mirror.
October 04, 2007
Air Force shops for high-power microwave technologies
The Air Force is surveying industry for high-power microwave (HPM) technologies that could be incorporated into unmanned aerial vehicles, bombs and cruise missiles...
The Defense Department is experimenting with HPM technologies for a number of applications. Targeted microwaves with sufficient power can disable or destroy electronic systems found in much of today’s military gear.
The low collateral damage aspect of the technology makes high-power microwave weapons useful in a wide variety of missions where avoiding civilian casualties is a major concern.”
The military already is using HPM technology in a nonlethal weapon called Active Denial System. The weapon works by emitting a directed beam of millimeter wave energy toward people, causing an extremely painful burning sensation without physical injury.
Improving Athletic Performance
A Sensor Worn Behind the Ear Could Monitor a Person's Movements
Researchers at the Imperial College London have developed a sensor worn behind the ear...about the size of a cuff link and measures the posture, stride length, step frequency, and acceleration of an individual. In addition to being used in applications for training athletes, the device could be employed to monitor a patient's recovery after surgery, such as orthopedic, or injury...
The sensor uses an accelerometer that allows it to measure motion in three dimensions. For example, when a runner hits the ground, a shock wave is transmitted through his body from his foot. The accelerometer is able to pick up these waves and sense the balance of the body and the changes in the runner's gait, such as the length of strides and the frequency of steps.
This information is processed within the sensor and wirelessly transmitted to a computer, where software...automatically extracts the data, analyzes it, and displays the results.
press relase | ABC News
Documentaries: To The Surface
~I no longer imagine myself as the leading man in a multimillion dollar movie. I'm am now and forever the 24/7 walking/talking eyes, ears, heart and soul of a completely funded documentary production crew.
I don't sit around anymore and wait for my closeup. Are you ready for my point of view?
[photo not from above]
UNLV Libraries' Las Vegas Collection
browse more (221 images) of Vegas Costumes http://digital.library.unlv.edu/
by way of Plep
~Who knew Guys & Dolls enjoyed the creations of boys with dolls?
October 03, 2007
Israeli Weapons.com
http://www.israeli-weapons.com/israeli_weapons_missile_systems.html
Videos http://www.israeli-weapons.com/media.htm
uC Berkeley Putting Course Lectures on YouTube
University offerings at the dedicated YouTube channel include peace and conflict studies, bioengineering courses, and a science class titled "Physics for Future Presidents."
The University plans to continually add videos to the channel, which officially launched Wednesday with about nine full courses consisting of approximately 40 lectures each.
press release | PhysOrg
~Imagine the home videos my Dad took of me as a kid with my sisters on YouTube along with lectures students pay hundreds of dollars to attend.
Satire seeks to unite Iraqis in mocking leaders
In the first episode, entitled “Federalism”, the Talabaniesque president turns the issuing of decrees into a nightmare, where you need a visa to visit your mother living two blocks away.
press release | Financial Times
thanks Conscientious
~Life during wartime. Makes you proud to be an American...strike that...a member of the human family.
October 02, 2007
Overheard Starbuck
http://overheardstarbuck.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html (Sept.2007)
McDonald's Video Game Review
The game is drawn with a crazy flair, the blood splattered happy meal at the title screen should be some indication. There are subtle touches, like the joint perpetually hung out the mouth of a marketer, or the fact that some of your customers are men with beards wearing skirts -- a byproduct of the randomly combinatorial nature of the character generation system. Watching the constant flow of people getting their trays, then walking off, is sickly hypnotic; it's the core pulse of the game's system, where the commodities turn into cash and complete the play loop, and its also an abstraction of something that is going on all over the world, many times a second. The illustrations and writing are pretty on-point as well (hint: before you bulldoze the Amazonian village to plant more GMO soy, start a "McDonald's for the Third World" campaign).
http://playthisthing.com/mcdonalds-video-game
thanks Diederik
~I'm waiting for McDonald's to offer free food for its less affluent customers. (If WalMart can sell prescription drugs at reasonable prices, McDonald's should be able to give food away with little effect on its bottom line.) Add various soups and stews along with potatoes and vegetable dishes that haven't been boiled to paste or baptized in their deep fryers. I would like to see the purposeful, elemental mix of the underemployed and the frantic consumerati as they place their orders, jockey for table space and toilet use. Here in the smaller towns, unlike America's largest cities, the poor are invisibly pushed from pillar to post by the police, one of their primary duties. To watch our poorer citizens daily eating for free in the same place as the people who pay to have them removed from their sights would be a worthwhile use of a multinational conglomerates influence.
Sanctuary McDonalds!
(Seriously the ill will, criminal accusations and activities such a project would generate would drive McDonald's out of business in a manner of months. Maybe "Apartheid McDonalds!" would work? Free food at locations far from the best parts of town and nowhere near our kids schools?
McDonald's along with local community services could bus the homeless and underemployed to their free food courts (refurbished offices and warehouses) making sure to take the longest routes possible, keeping their free eaters on the bus and away from harm and temptation and us. The buses can be painted and decorated like the mythic ones during America's golden age of stds.
Boeing's Virtual Fence Unusable
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) virtual fence project, being built by Boeing, has failed an initial set of tests...
Because of a software glitch, the first high-tech “virtual fence” on the nation’s borders remains inoperable, three months after its scheduled debut.
...the problem seems to be integration complexity. The current virtual fence project consists of nine 98-foot towers, spaced a few miles apart, containing sensors, radar and specialized cameras. The integration of these components is an essential element...
item | ZDNet by way of Harpers Weekly Review
MacArthur "genius" recipient uses Homer to help treat U.S. veterans
When Boston psychiatrist Jonathan Shay wanted to understand the psychological toll of the Vietnam War on the veterans he treated, he turned to the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey."
story | IHT
~"And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on." (Same As It Ever Was)
[photo defenselink\ not from above]
Alabama City Reopens Fallout Shelters
"If Huntsville is in the blast zone, there's not much we can do.* But if it's just fallout ... shelters would absorb 90 percent of the radiation," said longtime emergency management planner Kirk Paradise, whose Cold War expertise with fallout shelters led local leaders to renew Huntsville's program.
Huntsville's project, developed using $70,000 from a Homeland Security grant...
~*What is it about Huntsville that makes it more likely not to be 'in the blast zone'? There're hotter targets for Al Qaida's dirty bombs outside the city? (I smell pork.)
Perhaps Huntsville's Cold War experts have this proposed nuclear plant in mind Nuclear reactor plans get push? If the plant is built (undoubtedly outside Huntsville proper) besides the possiblilities of nuclear accidents, Al Qaida terrorists wouldn't need to b.t.o.e. (bring their own everything) in order to attempt to release radioactive fallout which the shelters would then protect Huntsvillagers from disasterously encountering. That is if the as yet to be built plant's defenses were seriously breached by Al Qaida's terrorists.
Huntsville's far sighted 'all hazards approach to emergency preparedness' is covering at least two possible nuclear disaster contingencies.
One contigency covers nuclear accidents from a proposed nuclear plant (ten+ years from going on line?). The other depends upon Al Qaida cooperation and willingness to explode its dirty-bomb somewhere outside the most densely populated parts of the city.
I'm guessing Al Qaida doesn't yet have a bomb addressed in Arabic script to a post office in one Huntville's suburbs. (Do you smell barbecue? I smell barbecue.)
10,000 East Germans Spied for the West
story by way of History News Network
~Dirty commies.
[photo not from above]
October 01, 2007
Defense Lawyers Cringe at MediaDefender's Child-Porn Patrol Plans
MediaDefender planned to unleash a peer-to-peer crawler to search unspecified file-sharing networks for child-porn videos and images based on keywords -- such as "young," "kids" and "taboo" -- provided by the AG's office.
Once suspected image files were found, the software would collect the IP address of the machines trading those files and filter for any addresses based in New York. The data MediaDefender collected would then be sent automatically to the AG's office, where investigators would analyze and investigate it, using a MediaDefender application to visit the IP addresses and download the suspect files.
It's unclear whether MediaDefender planned to download the suspected-child porn itself, or leave that to the AG's investigators. Jeffrey Lerner, spokesman for the New York AG's office, refused to comment on the record about whether MediaDefender was downloading child porn, due to "an ongoing investigation."
If the company knowingly downloaded child porn, it could run afoul of federal law, notwithstanding any arrangement it made with state authorities, legal experts say. Either way, several defense attorneys expressed surprise that a law enforcement agency would outsource any evidence collection to a private company.