Just look at it.

Banana Bag

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says privacy isn't important, and if you want to keep something private, "maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" (in other words, "innocent people have nothing to hide.")

Bruce Schneier calls bullshit with eloquence: "For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable."

But JWZ has the kicker, when he reminds us that Eric Schmidt's Google blackballed CNet's reporters after CNet published personal information about Schmidt's private life: ""Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story..." "To underscore its point about how much personal information is available, the CNET report published some personal information about Google's CEO Eric Schmidt -- his salary; his neighborhood, some of his hobbies and political donations -- all obtained through Google searches...."

Hey, Eric: if you don't want us to know how much money you make, where you live, and what you do with your spare time, maybe you shouldn't have a house, earn a salary, or have any hobbies, right?

Pirate Party MEP Christian Engström is drafting an Internet Bill of Rights for introduction into the European Parliament, and he's seeking your advice on the language:

I will give a first draft of an answer to the first question: What sections should be in the Internet Bill of Rights?

1. Fundamental rights. The European Convention on Human Rights should be respected on the net as well, including Article 8 (the right to privacy) and Article 10 (information freedom).

2. Net neutrality. Internet operators should provide neutral connections without any restrictions on content, sites, platforms, or the kinds of equipment that may be attached.

3. Mere conduit. I return for providing net neutrality, Internet operators and other suppliers of information infrastructure should not be held responsible for the information exchanged by their clients.

These are my first suggestions. Are there any other areas that ought to be covered by an Internet Bill of Rights? The floor is open, and all suggestions and comments are welcome.

Let's write an Internet Bill of Rights (via The Command Line)

Spanish Civil Guardsmen were dispatched to the Sigüenza Jazz Festival to gather evidence as to whether the Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core band were actually performing jazz or "contemporary music." Their attendance followed a complaint from a festivalgoer whose doctor "had warned it was 'psychologically inadvisable' for him to listen to anything that could be mistaken for mere contemporary music."

His complaint against the organisers, who refused to return his money, was duly registered and will be passed on to a judge.

"The gentleman said this was not jazz and that he wanted his money back," said the festival director, Ricardo Checa.

"He didn't get his money. After all, he knew exactly what group he was going to see, as their names were on the festival programme.

He added: "The question of what constitutes jazz and what does not is obviously a subjective one, but not everything is New Orleans funeral music.

"Larry Ochs plays contemporary, creative jazz. He is a fine musician and very well-renowned."

Spanish fan calls police over saxophone band who were just not jazzy enough

Crafter Tonky has produced a lovely xmas line of laser-cut and die-cut felt: sunny-side-up egg placemats, olive-and-pimento coaster, and alphabet wall hangings and necklaces.

Tonky's Holiday FELT-stival (Thanks, Tonky!)

National Geographic rounds up its favorite archaeological finds of 2009, from vampire corpses to pirate booty:

8. Blackbeard Pirate Relics, Gold Found
A sword guard, tiny gold pieces, and a coin are among newfound artifacts from a shipwreck off North Carolina--shown in exclusive pictures. The discoveries, announced in March, add to evidence that the ship belonged to the pirate Blackbeard.

7. World War II "Samurai Subs" Found--Carried Aircraft
Two advanced Japanese "samurai subs" were found off Pearl Harbor in February and announced in November--including a stealth aircraft-carrying submarine and a supersleek vessel engineered for utmost speed.

Top Ten Archaeology Finds: Most Viewed of 2009 (Thanks, Marilyn!)

This gentleman couldn't figure out why food was going missing in his high-storey NYC apartment. His girlfriend denied taking it. So he set up a hidden camera to see what was happening, and shortly thereafter, he saw a strange woman creep out of a deep storage crawlspace over the kitchen, let herself down onto the kitchen table and help herself to his pantry. He phoned the police (he was in the apartment), and they told him after investigating that they believed the woman had been secretly living in his apartment for weeks.

Creepy Creeper!

SF author Mary Robinette Kowal sez,

Once upon a time, someone starting a new publishing house would either have a personal fortune or would seek large private investors. Crowdsourced fundraising allows the masses to chip in for projects they believe in.

Tu Publishing is worth getting behind. It is a small, independent multicultural SFF press for children and YA and they are raising money for startup costs right now. I've had the opportunity to correspond with Stacy Whitman, the force behind it, in my role as SFWA secretary and she's sharp, knows the industry and is passionate about YA and SF.

The catch is that the fundraiser only has four more days to go and they only have 40% of their total.

"Fantasy and science fiction, mystery and historical fiction--these genres draw in readers like no other. Yet it is in these genres that readers of color might feel most like an outsider, given that such a large percentage features white characters (when they feature human characters). It is the goal of Tu Publishing to publish genre books for children and young adults that fill this gap in the market--and more importantly, this gap in serving our readers. By focusing on multicultural settings and characters in fantastic stories, we also open up worlds to all readers."

Tu Publishing: a small, independent multicultural SFF press for children and YA (Thanks, Mary!)

Praise be, this holy calf was born a week ago on a Sterling, Connecticut farm owned by Brad Davis. From WFSB:

Davis said, "Well, I think it's maybe a message from up above. I'm not sure. We're still trying to figure that out."

Megan Johnson of Sterling said, "Well I wasn't surprised. I wasn't surprised at all because the dairy industry has needed a miracle for a long time and this is it. I think it's divine intervention, personally. I'm in the breeding business and I know about reproduction and genetics and I don't think this could happen again in a million cows."

"Cow Born With Divine Symbol" (via Fortean Times)

Avant garde music mag The Wire posted a fascinating compilation of computer music pieces, each programed with a Tweet-length piece of code. The 22 artists from around the world wrote their pieces in SuperCollider, an open source programming language for audio synthesis that many laptop musicians use to compose live during performances. The compilation is titled "Supercollider 140" and is released under a Creative Commons license. From The Wire:

It started as a curious project, when live coding enthusiast and Toplap member Dan Stowell started tweeting tiny snippets of musical code using SuperCollider. Pleasantly surprised by the reaction, and "not wanting this stuff to vanish into the ether" he has recently collated the best pieces into a special download for The Wire's online readership...

Many of these pieces are actually generative, so if you re-run the source code (the track titles) you get a new piece of music.

SuperCollider 140 (SourceForge, via @chris_carter_)

"Best of Twitter tunes album released" (New Scientist)

This gorgeous wasp sculpture, c.1980s by artist S. Allen, is for sale at Seattle's Great Stuff shop. It's 24" (h) x 34" (d) x 38" (w). The price is $4,500. "Centered around an industrial light bulb and hundreds of typewriter and printer parts, car door handles, sprockets and springs all assembled with fine-gauge wire; wings made from reclaimed 1/8" acrylic sheeting." Wasp Sculpture (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

Here's a competitor in the 6th Robo-One Gate dance competition, held in Tokyo in November 2009. I wonder if the rules require the robots to look like scary cyborg schoolgirls?

I don't know about you, but I've got multiple cookie exchange parties lined up in the coming weeks. If you're on the same page and need a clever idea or two, the NotSoHumblePie cooking blog has several great science-themed cookies, sure to make geeks, dorks and nerds smile.

Petri dish cookies are pictured above, but there's also:

• Chocolate Atoms
• Gel Electrophoresis Squares
• An Almost-Complete Periodic Table
• Lab Mice (which I think would be great with little cinnamon candies for eyes)
• Gingerbread Scientists

Heavens, they're tasty! And educational!

(Aha! Pharyngula is apparently the reason half my friend list was emailing me about these today.)

Guestblogger Paul Spinrad is a freelance writer/editor, and is Projects Editor for MAKE magazine. He is the author of The VJ Book and The Re/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids, and was an early contributor to bOING bOING when it was an online zine. He lives in San Francisco. 

Last year, cultural empire Disney launched its first "Disney English" school for kids in Shanghai, China. It would be a big win for Disney if they could own English language learning in the non-English speaking world. Any Disney English schools in areas where their presence might be controversial could be constructed like castles, with real moats! Chinese TV news clip here and Disney English website here.

Reminded by the incorrectly-colored dumpster, wrongdistance points out how a little tweaking makes for a big difference on the newsstand.

These cute Christmas postcards featuring a tree made out of raw bacon are for sale on Etsy. The creator, Mike Geno, specializes in drawing meat — it makes me kind of sad that this is just a drawing. Can you imagine frying this tree and eating it for breakfast? Yum/barf.

[Etsy via Eat Me Daily]

detainee063.com: "This is the interrogation log of Mohammed al-Qahtani. It is being published in real time: each entry will appear exactly seven years after it was first recorded. The interrogation took place at Guantanamo Bay."

That is him in the photo above. He is still imprisoned in Guantanamo. The serialized logs are not for the faint of heart. By way of background, al-Qahtani was the first "war on terror detainee" the United States admitted to having tortured. Snip:

Over the course of the fifty days, Al-Qahtani, Detainee 063, is questioned by teams of interrogators working in shifts, typically for twenty hours a day. While individual entries of the log are sometimes brutal and unpleasant to read, what is particularly disturbing about the treatment Al-Qahtani receives is its relentlessness. By publishing the log in real time, this site is intended as a kind of re-enactment - to show how mistreatment which might not appear immediately as terrible as, for example, waterboarding, can nonetheless come to amount to nothing short of torture, how by being prolonged and unceasing it can become unbearable.

More about the project here. Apart from the brutality, it just gets really weird. Some of the entries go, "Played Christina Aguilera music," or,

Control began "birthday party" and placed party hat on detainee. Detainee offered birthday cake - refused. Interrogators and guards sing "God bless America". Detainee became very angry.

The entries are also available through an RSS feed and a Twitter account. To those of you in the US, remember that your tax dollars paid for every word of it. (thanks, Susannah Breslin)