I spent the last week in Carmel Valley, California. It was the first time I saw a wild turkey. What an amazing-looking animal. No wonder Ben Franklin wanted to make it out national bird. Great choice -- scrappy, colorful, smart. So much better than the monochrome Bald Eagle.

While I was up there, I read this excellent story about Stuart Thornton's trip through the towns of South Monterey County. These towns used to be quite bustling until the 101 Freeway was built.

Pulling into a dirt lot beside the store, the building looks like a gas station and store from the ‘50s. Though the gas pumps are no longer there, faded paint on the side of the white building advertises groceries, cold drinks and beer.

As I walk in, a man carrying a handful of boxes walks up from a storage room in the back. “Are you Marcel,” I ask.

“Yea, why,” he asks brusquely.

“I’m writing an article about South County for the Monterey County Weekly,” I say as I start to perspire.

“I’m too busy,” he says as I glance around the deserted store. “Besides, advertisement will draw people to see what’s going on.”

I think that perhaps getting people to stop by his store would not be such a bad thing. In San Ardo, people need money to survive, right?

Though he refuses to answer any of my questions, Miranda does allow me to look at his impressive collection of caps sitting on wooden shelves that circle the top part of his store. While I take photos, he stands behind me in awkward silence. I think about trying to strike up a conversation again, but I realize it would be as futile as trying to pump water from a dry well.

Link

Inevitable: A Glendale businessman has been charged with stalking an ex-girlfriend by attaching a cellphone with GPS to her car, then showing up at random to threaten her in person.

In what authorities said was the first stalking case of its kind in Los Angeles County, Ara Gabrielyan, 32, was charged Tuesday with stalking and threatening over a six-month period to kill his former girlfriend and himself.

Gabrielyan -- who ran an Armenian CD and video specialty shop -- is suspected of using GPS technology to pinpoint her location so he could arrange apparent chance encounters at the bookstore, at the airport, even at her brother's grave site. (...)After the unidentified 35-year-old woman broke off their nearly two-year relationship, Gabrielyan would follow her by car, show up at her doorstep and call her 30 to 100 times a day, she told police.(...)

Gabrielyan had purchased a Nextel phone device that has a motion switch on it that turns itself on when it moves. As long as the device is on, it transmits a signal every minute to the GPS satellite, which in turn sends the location information to a computer. Gabrielyan, who paid for a service to send him the information, would then log on to a Web site to monitor her locations, police said. Police are investigating where Gabrielyan purchased the device and the tracking service.

Link to news story, Link to LA County DA's report.

MP3 audio transcript of a interview with Tim O'Reilly talking about Alpha Geeks, who make things that aren't available, and as a result, make them available to everybody.

So often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn't until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live in a world of their own. They see and act on premises that are not yet apparent to others.

In the computer industry, these are the folks I affectionately call "the alpha geeks", the hackers who have such mastery of their tools that they "roll their own" when existing products don't give them what they need.

Link

Iraq has a phony McDonalds, called MaDonal. Reminds me of the 6-Elevens I saw in Rarotonga. Link

A court in Germany recently upheld the enforceability of the Free Software Foundation's General Public License (AKA the GPL). This was the first court decision in which the enforceability of the GPL was upheld, so until this moment, no one knew whether the GPL would withstand a court challenge. The German decision has finally been translated by the Oxford Internet Institute so that English speakers can get a sense of what its nuances were: PDF link to decision in English, PDF link to commentary by Chistian Ahlert, PDF link to commentary by Thomas Hoeren

Our favorite cyberdelic tour guide RU Sirius just posted his latest issue of the NeoFiles. Inside, RU talks with privacy hactivist John Gilmore, democratic transhumanist James Hughes, and performance philosopher Antero Alli.

"In issue #9, the discourse about transhumanism continues, but we also continue to cover other terrains. I never tire of pointing out that technique shares roots with technology. Thus, we continue to explore methods for self-awareness (which as often as not) — (are) techniques for ecstasy. Finally, any transformation worth its gene pool will likely find itself facing off against the constraints of unreasonable authority."

Link

BoingBoing reader Kevin Slavin says,

When I attended some of the RNC protests on Tuesday (Link to BoingBoing post), I was depending on txtmob. It was invaluable for staying safe and developing effective protest strategies and tactics.

Right around 5:30 or 6, just as things started to heat up around me, I stopped getting SMS, just like that. I thought it was rather suspicious, but was willing to concede that it could be some technology malfunction. There were more SMSes going out than usual, for the region, and I thought maybe it was an overload. It blew any opportunities I had to effectively co-ordinate with the legal, and civil, RNC protests. So now, as it turns out -- say the txtmob people -- it wasn't technology, it was T-Mobile (my now ex-carrier). Highlighted text below, from the txtmob dispatch: "T-Mobile blocked TXTmob messages during a portion of the RNC. "

My only question is, WTF? Since when does T-Mobile decide which messages are ok, and which aren't? What, in my contract with them, specifies that they can decide which messages I am allowed to get? Who told who to block which messages? I'm no lawyer, but those seem like the kinds of questions that lawyers are interested in.

Following text snipped from a TxTMOB update to subscribers with Subject: TxTMob UPDATE: Post RNC, issued September 3:

Finally, a note for T-Mobile customers: As many of you are aware, T-Mobile blocked TXTmob messages during a portion of the RNC. While we won't speculate on the reasons for this action, it would be extremely helpful if the hundreds of customers who were unable to receive TXTMob messages called T-Mobile to complain. Be sure to explain that TXTMob is an opt-in service that you have chosen to join, and to encourage their representatives to contact admin@txtmob.com if they have any questions.

Link to TxTMOB website, and link to related CNN story about the role of phone-text services in protests at the convention.

BoingBoing pal and inimitable code wizard David Weekly is in Ghana this weekend with a group called Camp Amelia -- teaching young African people about I.T. and science basics. Cool! Snip from project website:

On September 1, half a dozen American educators, engineers and university students [departed] for Accra, Ghana to run a pilot project for Camp Amelia, a children's summer technology literacy program already made popular on the North American continent. The team, composed mainly of Stanford students and alumni and funded by grants from Microsoft Corporation and Chicago's Beck Foundation, will be coordinating with local schools, government, and businesses to provide technology education for underprivileged students ages 8-11 in the greater Accra area. Camp activities run the gamut from using soap bubbles in explaining physics to engaging in "Internet scavenger hunts" and using interactive educational software programs developed by Camp Amelia technology teams. Participants will learn how to use word processors and even the basics of computer programming! These elements will teach the children the value of independent thinking and learning.

And here's a note from David, having just arrived in Accra on September 3:

So I'm writing this from a computer lab in Accra; it's nicely modern, with about 50 pentium 4-2000 machines, but it's about 1500ms to anything really interesting on the Internet backbone and the speed's not that fabulous. But it works! And while we were hoping to have 50 students for the camp, it looks like we actually got more like 150 applicants; so we're actually having to select which student we'll take, which is bittersweet. The plane flights over were pretty brutal; a 10 hour flight from SFO to Amsterdam and a six and a half hour to Accra. I woke up this morning at four AM local time (having gone to bed at midnight) and was *wide* awake. Now it's 11am local and I'm feeling like I need to sleep some more. It's kind of wacky. We'll be working on setting up the camp's curriculum and so forth; the camp starts Monday! Keep your fingers crossed for us. People are friendly, the city is insane with traffic and potholes and vendors and goats...

Link to Camp Amelia project home page. The group's stated mission is "Fighting poverty through science, technology and mentorship."
Link to David's personal blog -- where he's sending text dispatches (and soon, photos) from Ghana.

Following up on this earlier BoingBoing post about a thin excuse for public exhibitionism uh, daring political protest that took place in New York earlier this week, BoingBoing reader Jim says, "This is a full screen QTVR of the Axis Of Eve Demonstration during the RNC. Almost like being there." NSFW Link.

More QTVR panoramas from other scenes at this week's RNC can be found on photographer Jook Leung's website. Link (via panoramas.dk)

Website that collects photos of fake trees that serve to disguise mobile phone signal towers. Some disguises are more convincing than others. Link (Thanks, Alex)

An anonymous BoingBoing reader writes, "This is a sort of retro blog. I took John Carmack's archived plan files (finger johnc [at] idsoftware.com) and put them into blog style, and will continue to do so (I have plans starting from 1997)." Link

I've uploaded 50 or so more of my WorldCon photos to Flickr and tagged 'em with "worldcon" (you can upload your own with the same tag and they'll show up in the RSS feed). Some good stuff there: the first Hugo (which appears to have been constructed with tinsnips and lead solder), Terry Pratchett's badge techotchkes, really happy goth bondage play, Singularity-focused authors, barbarians in mirrorshades, amazingly detailed models of Unseen University and environs, an ironic sneak photo of a t-shirt, Dorks are Hot t-shirt, und zo weiter. Link

Someone is ebaying a giant prop rollerblade from an episode of Father Ted. Link (Thanks, Alfie)

These breathtaking visualizations of the decision-tree explored by a chess-playing computer are great.

A view into the workings of a chess-playing program that must make millions of decisions in each game. In this piece we explore the notion that our lives consist of a vast sequence of choices.

PNG Link 1, PNG Link 2, PNG Link 3 (via Oblomovka)

In Wired News today, a report I filed on Microsoft's new music download service:

A help page on the beta site provides instructions describing how users can enable MSN Music downloads to play on their iPods.Microsoft's recent criticism of Apple for not licensing iPod functionality to third-party tech companies is not without irony, given past accusations of anticompetitive behavior that resulted in Microsoft agreeing last year to pay out $1.8 billion to settle consumer antitrust suits. Just last Friday, six California municipalities sued Microsoft over claims it overcharged government customers because of its effective monopoly in computer operating systems.

The company's new war against iTunes and the iPod is seen by some industry watchers as not unlike its earlier war for market share against the Netscape browser -- which Internet Explorer won. In light of the fact that Microsoft claims its MSN hub attracts more than 350 million monthly unique users, sheer reach -- rather than product feature details -- may ultimately determine who wins this war.

Open-format activists like Jason Schultz, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ask why the company doesn't simply strip DRM altogether, and lament the fact that Microsoft's service launch makes it all the more likely that two opposing proprietary systems -- Microsoft's and Apple's -- will now dominate a marketplace some feel would be better served by open standards such as MP3.

"Microsoft's music launch is just the latest effort to 'bring music to the masses' by, ironically, setting up a new, separate, incompatible DRM fiefdom," said Schultz. "The thing people love about the internet is that you can send e-mail to anyone in the world with any e-mail client. In the digital music world, however, we're seeing an increasing trend toward technological balkanization.

Link to story, and Link to MSN Music. More of Jason Schultz's comments on the service launch are here.

Febreeze "Scent Stories" is a smellovision player that loads in discs charged with smelly compounds that are slowly rotated through, a new stink every 30 minutes. Shania Twain is the official spokesnashvillean for the product. Link (via Gizmodo)

Here are syndicated RSS and Atom feeds of pictures uploaded to the Flickr image-sharing site with the tag "Worldcon." Right now it's just a few undistinguished shots I took yesterday, but if you're at Worldcon snapping photos (and really, who isn't?) put 'em on Flickr and we'll get a bleeding-edge snapshot feed. (Disclosure: I'm an advisor to Ludicorp, the company that makes Flickr). Link

Paul Ford has written an article for XML.com about his plan to scrape all the information he can about the Senate and convert it into searchable, structured data (much like the UK's brilliant They Work For You project, which does the same for Parliament). He's planning to document his process of converting the Senate's sloppy html into clean XML, and turn the process into a tutorial on how to make the Semantic Web come alive.

Of course screen-scraping is itself a dubious process. When the Senate decides to change its page design, moves the page, or alters the suffix, I'm out of luck. At the same time, it's hard to argue against the fact that the Senate's own web site is a definitive source for up-to-date, reliable information about the current composition of the Senate. This is a situation that we're likely to encounter again: the best, most reliable site to get some information is the worst place to get useful data. Hopefully, as we go forward, we'll have multiple sources of information on various members of the government, and can use them all together.

Link (via Kottke)

Remember the Lying Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who made up a bunch of base smears about John Kerry's military record and aired them in a TV spot? They even published an open letter in which they lied some more, claiming to have served with Kerry when they hadn't.

Well, it turns out that some of the swift boat veterans whose name appeared at the bottom of that open letter never saw it, never signed it, and don't agree with it. Those Lying Swift Boat Veterans For Truth! Whacky.

"It's kind of like stealing my identity," said Anderson, who spent a year on a swift boat as an engine man and gunner.

The letter, which was posted on the Swift Boat Veter-ans for Truth Web site, claims the Demo-cratic presidential candidate has "grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that (Vietnam) war."...

"After reading the letter," Anderson said, "it kind of got under my skin. I had never come across a situation where someone used my name without my support or approval. It's not a very comforting feeling."

What's worse, he said, he disagrees with the letter.

"Had they asked me to use my name, I wouldn't have allowed them to," he said...

Anderson does not know how the Swift Boat Vets for Truth got his name, but it appears exactly as it has appeared on rosters at swift boat vet reunions. He suspects the list was pulled from the Swift Boat Sailors Association, a nonpolitical, not-for-profit organization linking swift boat veterans.

Link (via Atrios)

This magnetic fridge-mounted bottle-opener is way cool. (via Engadget)

The Daily Show aired a fantastic spoof RNC video meant to parody a George Bush reelecation spot. George Bush: Words Speak Louder Than Facts. Funny, vicious and absurdist. Link6.2MB Quicktime Link (Thanks, j2323!)

SETI@home has turned up an unexplained radio signal from 1000 light years away that's, well, unexplained. From New Scientist:

“It’s the most interesting signal from SETI@home,” says Dan Werthimer, a radio astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and the chief scientist for SETI@home. “We’re not jumping up and down, but we are continuing to observe it.”

Named SHGb02+14a, the signal has a frequency of about 1420 megahertz. This happens to be one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, readily absorbs and emits energy.

Some astronomers have argued that extraterrestrials trying to advertise their presence would be likely to transmit at this frequency, and SETI researchers conventionally scan this part of the radio spectrum.

Link

Update: The BBC followed up with a report quoting researchers who say that the news above was blown out of proportion and there is no signal. Nothing to hear here. Move along. (cue X-Files theme) Link

Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body is a book about the genetics behind human oddities. It's the companion to a Channel 4 documentary of the same title that aired this summer. The author, Armand Marie Leroi, is a biologist and lecturer at Imperial College London. From a review in The Guardian a few months back:

"There are three things that lift this book above mere exploitation: the seriousness of Leroi's scientific investigations; the humane concern he manifests for the suffering other; and the sensitivity of his aesthetic appreciation of the wonders of nature. "Beautiful" is a term frequently used to describe some bottled monster. This aesthetic appreciation extends to previous writers on the subject. He describes an account of the progress of a deer embryo by the 17th-century natural philosopher William Harvey (more famous for his discovery of the circulation of the blood) as "one of the loveliest descriptions of a mammalian foetus ever written".

I'll be in the UK next week and I'm definitely going to pick up a copy! Link

Update: BB reader Nolandda points out that the Mutants book is also available in the US with a slightly different title. Link

Our apartment in Paris didn't have any ice trays but Kelly found these at the supermarket. Cub Facil are disposable plastic bags that are divided into cube-size compartments. You just fill a bag with water, tie it closed, freeze, and then tear out the cubes as you need them. Each box is about US$2 and contains ten bags. (Click on the photo for a better view.)


Update: Thanks to the dozens of readers who responded that these ice cube bags are old hat in most countries outside the United States. News to me!

BoingBoing reader Kevin Slavin says,

"Things are getting a little heavy about 10 blocks from here -- police are reported (widely) to have shown up at a large demonstration manning an LRAD. What's an LRAD? Long-range acoustic device. Military non-lethal technology being tested in Baghdad and Fallujah, and it looks like, right now: NYC.

First two links off Google: one, two.

This is heavy and damaging stuff, that leaves no marks when used on humans. Latest text reports say it's been turned on, pointing west, volume low. You can hear live coverage from Union Square by calling 212 400 7458, option 4.

Update: As he walks towards the protest site in question, Slavin text-messages BoingBoing from his mobile phone:

"Here are updates via indymedia now-- they are discussing the LRAD -- it's a lot of people saying it, but I still can't confirm."

[Ed. note: following is an abridged excerpt of the first-person accounts now being posted on the indymedia site, shown in reverse chronological order. ]

08:20 PM: There is an additonal small contingent of protesters rallying at 34th and 7th. Large # of police. The group is planning to march to the ANSWER rally.
08:13 PM: There is a carnival atmosphere in Union Sq. Lots of art for sale, and a great presence by Iraq Vets. against the war.Several thousand at least. Caller feels that the police presence is heavy but par for the course in NYC at this point.
08:01 PM: The Protest Warriors are being put in their own pen. It is expected that the two pens will scream at each other for a while.
07:51 PM Officer has powered on the LRAD (sound weapon) device, pointing it west. volume is at minimum. It has not been deployed yet.
07:41 PM: Police have penned the south side of Union Sq.
07:30 PM: 1500 people now in Union Sq. Large police presence but fairly chill so far. Bike police on all corners. As it gets dark the crowd seems to be getting more excited and larger, still fesitve atmosphere.
07:12 PM: There are 100-200 people at 29th St. and 8th Ave in the ANSWER pen. There are several hundred people in Union Sq. Reports of law enforcement with semi-automatic weapons at 34th St. and 7th Ave.
06:42 PM:Receiving reports that an LRAD (sound weapon) is present at north side of Union Square.

Link to update transcript from indymedia, and Link to a related page on their website with background on the device -- said to weigh only 45 pounds, and shown in the AP file photo here.

Snip from Brian Braiker's July 12 Newsweek article (Link):

In February the Marines signed a $1.1 million contract for the devices; the I Marine Expeditionary Force took them to Fallujah and the Navy's Fifth Fleet has them in the Persian Gulf. (McSweeney didn't know if they'd been used.) Miami, Los Angeles, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Department of Homeland Security are considering purchases. With protestors coming to New York and Boston for the conventions, might we see the first domestic use this summer? Gruenler hints: "All I can say is there are cities you would recognize."

And, this from an August 30 AP story from Ellen Simon (Link):

Earlier this month, the New York Police Department showed off a machine called the Long Range Acoustic Device, developed for the military and capable of blasting at an earsplitting 150 decibels -- as loud as a firecracker, a jet engine taking off or artillery fire at 500 feet, according to the Noise Center at the League for the Hard of Hearing. The NYPD said it would use the machine to direct crowds to safety if there's a terrorist attack or remind protesters where they're allowed to march. Police said they wouldn't use the earsplitting screeching noise feature at the convention. "It's only to communicate in large crowds," Inspector Thomas Graham of the police department's crowd control unit said.

Update 2: Image from indymedia said to be snapshot from site of protest taking place right now; the LRAD device is shown mounted atop police car. Link to full-size image shown in thumbnail at left. Link to more snapshots of LRAD device from other protest events during the RNC. See also wikipedia entry for background (Link), and this August 25 CBS report on NYPD's plans to use LRAD at RNC: Link

BoingBoing reader Charles ODonovan says, "I just noticed that the name of the guy who invented the LRAD device deployed at the RNC was also mentioned on BoingBoing back in March with one of his other inventions: Link."

French blogger and journalist Emmannuelle Richard posts an appeal for the release of the two french journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, currently held hostage in Iraq:

Back from a family, Internet-free vacation. Still, I was worn down by the news of the kidnapping of two French journalists and colleagues of RFI and Radio France in Iraq: I only know them by e-mail, because they belong to Spartacus, a group of world correspondents for francophone radio stations that I co-founded in 2000. Christian gave an interview to Larry King on CNN in March 2003. Everybody in the network is just praying for their safe release. Here is Spartacus' press release, sent out while I was away...

Link to Emmanneulle's blog entry, with copy of the group's appeal (scroll down page for English translation) (Thanks, Jean-Luc)

John sez,

More than 100 authors have contributed to Small Bites, a new anthology published to support author and editor Charles Grant, who has been hospitalized for nearly six months now with various lung and heart ailments.

Grant is the author or editor of more than 100 books, and the winner of nearly every major award for speculative fiction. He has also been a tireless and generous supporter of other writers through the years.

In addition to the anthology, September 12 marks not only six months since Grant first entered the hospital, it is also his birthday. His wife is gathering birthday cards from fans and friends to help cheer him up. Cards can be sent to: P. O. Box 97 Newton, NJ 07860-0097

Link (Thanks, John!)

Interesting piece in today's NYT about NYPD crowd control tactics at the Repulican National Convention. If I'm reading this correctly, the prevailing logic seems to be that a lack of wanton violence makes the protests less worthy of air time and serious media coverage?

[N]early 1,800 protesters had been arrested on the streets, two-thirds of them on Tuesday night alone. But for all the anger of the demonstrations, they have barely interrupted the convention narrative, and have drawn relatively little national news coverage.

Using large orange nets to divide and conquer, and a near-zero tolerance policy for activities that even suggest the prospect of disorder, the New York Police Department has developed what amounts to a pre-emptive strike policy, cutting off demonstrations before they grow large enough, loud enough, or unruly enough to affect the convention. The demonstrations, too, have thus far been more restrained than many recent protests elsewhere; five years ago in Seattle, for example, there was widespread arson and window-smashing, none of which has occurred here. Lacking bloody scenes of billy-club-wielding police or billowing clouds of tear gas, the cameras - and the public's attention - have focused elsewhere.

"It is almost easier to explain what you are not getting here," said Ted Koppel, anchor and managing editor of ABC's "Nightline," when he was asked why news organizations have given little time to the protests. "What you are not getting here is a replay of 1968 in Chicago."

Reg-required Link

I'm in Dallas Ft Worth airport en route from an EFF gig in Chile to Boston for the WorldCon and thought I'd post my finalized WorldCon schedule, which has a couple minor changes from the last time around:

* THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2:

6PM: Unlimited Access: Issues involving unlicensed access to spectrum. With Harold Feld from the the Media Access Project.

* FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3:

10AM: Group reading from The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases

11AM: Locus Award ceremony

5PM: Drunk on Technology: With Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Charlie Stross

* SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4:

12PM: The End of Copyright: Can the Arts Survive the Digital Age? With Charlie Petit, Daniel Grotta, Steve Miller, and James M. Turner

1PM: Tradeoffs between Freedom, Security, and Privacy. With Joseph Lazzaro, Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Don Sakers

2:30-3PM: Charlie Stross and I will be signing our new short novel, Rapture of the Nerds, just published in the new issue of Argosy Magazine, at the Borderlands Books table in the Dealers' Room

5PM: Postcapitalist Social Mechanisms. With M. M. Buckner, David Friedman, Benjamin Rosenbaum and Charlie Stross

* SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5:

10:30AM Ebooks: Neither E Nor Books. A recapitulation of my talk at the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference

4PM: Reading

5PM: Sign at the Asimov's Magazine table in the Dealer's Room

6PM: Group signing for Re/Visions anthology in Room 107 in the Hynes

* MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6:

11AM: Kaffeeklatsch

12-12:30: International Copyright Issues

Link

Someone has translated Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 into a series of ASCII text images. Uma's looking as thin as a stick figure! But: brilliant. Link (thanks, Case)

"Hey Hey! Ho Ho! These pesky clothes have got to go!"

I don't really know what they were shouting at the time, but a cadre of chyxxors performed a panty flash mob during RNC protests yesterday. BoingBoing reader Cyrus Farivar took some snapshots of the action, which was organized by Axis of Eve at Battery Park. Link.

If you can't get enough of this sort of thing -- and really, who can -- Fleshbot has more images: Link

JP writes:

Nearly half a million Floridians were ordered to leave their homes today. Kennedy Space Center employees were sent home leaving the Space Shuttle Orbiters to fend for themselves... Frances threatens but where will she land? Various models predict different scenarios. The folks on Space.com's message board are keeping watch. "Shuttle_guy" sez "We are securing the facility and the Shuttle Orbiters for the storm. For everything up to a category IV hurricane we have a "ride out" crew on the base during the storm to do what they can safely do to protect the Flight hardware. However for category IV and V the hardware is on it's own. No one will be on the KSC property for this storm which is expected to remain a strong Cat. IV." According to "najaB" all three orbiters are in the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) which is the least protected of KSC facilities. Most ominously "najaB" reports that "...in the original plan, the Orbiters weren't supposed to be in the OPF during a storm - they're supposed to be transferred over to ride out the storm in the [40-year-old Vehicle Assembly Building]. I guess nobody ever thought that all the Orbiters would be immovable in the OPF at the same time that KSC would be staring down the barrel of a Cat 4 storm..."

As of this writing NOAA is predicting Frances will hit south of the Kennedy Space Center with her counter-clockwise punch hitting the space port the hardest. Or perhaps she is targeting Disneyworld? In any case, prayers to all the people in the way...

Link to previous post.

Snipped from 5ives:

Five things I'll be doing while you're at Burning Man

1.carefully stewarding my pallor
2. repeatedly watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on the TiVo
3. defecating indoors -- copiously, often, and without queueing
4. not tongue-kissing a sweaty Java programmer in clown makeup named "Shanti"
5. wearing clothes--lots and lots of square, capitalist, heinous-body-covering clothes

Link (Thanks, Jason Schultz!)

My latest article at TheFeature.com is about a new breed of robots--biomimetic blimps, tiny helicopters, and swarmbots--that use Bluetooth for wireless communications.

Bluetooth is finally taking off. Literally. A small robotic blimp floats gently through the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, wirelessly interacting with a desktop computer to literally evolve its own navigation software without human intervention. What the blimp sees via its onboard sensors is Bluetoothed to the PC for processing. The artificially evolved "brains" are then transmitted back to the mylar blimp so it can intelligently fly through its environment, improving with each run....

Link

A new study from the University of Washington's Information School provides more proof that search rules:

More than half of survey participants admitted losing track of a paper document at least once a week -- more than twice the number of people who reported losing electronic information.

The result? While more than 60 percent reported being satisfied with their ability to handle computerized records such as e-mails, electronic documents and Web bookmarks, only 31 percent were satisfied with their ability to organize their papers.

The survey is part of an interesting project called Keeping Found Things Found, an effort to develop innovative ways to manage information stored digitally and on dead trees. Link

At the NanoBot, Howard Lovy writes about the philosophical connection between nanotechnology and the Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah. This is not newage (rhymes with "sewage") mumbo-jumbo, but rather an informed, passionate, and moving thought-exercise about the "spirit" of science:

"...the most brilliant men of Medieval Jewry, shut out of any other profession in which their intellect could be used, spent what I used to think was a complete waste of mind power, reflecting on the minutia of Jewish law – taking the Torah and extrapolating a complex system of laws. Creating, codifying, obsessively ordering and numbering a spiritual system into a logical system.

But the smaller you get, the more you see the logic and order break down. The laws of physics seem to change. The smaller the size, the deeper the mystery and the more the orderly turns chaotic. It all meets on the nanoscale and below, where spirit/spirituality meets the individual components of organisms, where sand meets wave, where analog meets digital, where spirit meets matter."

Link

Hacker zine 2600 reports that Emmanuel Goldstein (aka Eric Corley), the publication's founder and editor, was among hundreds arrested at demonstrations against the Republican National Convention in New York City on Tuesday. Snip:

The march which Emmanuel was apparently trying to videotape ended at 16th Street near Union Square when the police surrounded the marchers and began arresting everyone in the area -- at least 150 people. Officers at the scene reported that the arrested will be charged with "parading without a permit," but reliable information will probably not be available until arraignments take place over the next day or two.

At least 900 people were arrested on Tuesday, August 31st, most if not all for nonviolent and minor offenses, offenses which in non-protest situations would generally not result in spending any time at all locked up. People arrested at previous protests have usually had their charges eventually dropped or significantly reduced as the judicial system notices that their is little or no evidence that the protesters have committed any crimes at all.

Link to report on 2600. Portrait of Emmanuel Goldstein from Declan McCullagh, original here: Link. (via Engadget, thanks, ford)

Whups -- the Pentagon censored portions of a video used to teach about FOIA and public information, according to this report by Ted Bridis at AP:

The Defense Department spent $70,500 to produce a Humphrey Bogart-themed video called "The People's Right to Know" to teach employees to respond to citizen requests for information. But when it came to showing the tape to the public, the Pentagon censored some of the footage.

Officials said they blacked out parts of the training video with the message, "copyrighted material removed for public viewing," because they were worried the government didn't have legal rights to some historical footage that was included.

Link to story, Link to video clips (Real) (via Politech)

Hundreds of shoppers crammed into a brand-new Ikea store as it opened in Saudi Arabia, crushing three or more people to death.

A Saudi man and a Pakistani man were among those killed, officials in the port city of Jeddah said. The incident occurred after shoppers rushed into a branch of Ikea to claim a limited number of credit vouchers being offered to the public. More than 8,000 people had gathered near the store for the $150 vouchers, some of them having camped overnight. The nationality of the third person killed was not given. Sixteen people were injured.

Link (Thanks Siege)

MSN Music launched today. From a CBS Marketwatch report:

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled details of a new service for downloading digital music, placing it squarely in competition with Apple's rival iTunes music service. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft will launch a preview version of its new MSN Music service tomorrow that will allow users to legally download songs mostly for 99 cents each. The service will also make entire albums available, the majority of which will cost $9.99, the company said. Microsoft's push into the arena for downloadable music trails Apple's hugely successful iPod digital music player and its own iTunes music service. Apple also charges 99 cents for each song downloaded through iTunes.

Link to news report, and Link to MSN Music home page. (Thanks, Jean-Luc)

Update: Jason Schultz points out the system requirements list:

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
Internet Explorer 5.01 (or later), which supports 128-bit encryption
Windows Media Player 7.1 (or later), we recommend the latest version
A 233 megahertz (MHz) processor (such as an Intel Pentium II or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processor) or faster
64 megabytes (MB) of RAM or more
Speakers and sound capability
Payment with a valid credit card with a U.S. billing address
To enjoy high-quality audio as a Radio Plus subscriber, you will need Windows Media Player 9 Series (or later)

Link

The self-described "American Jerk" behind Tokyo Damage Report says "This page is about interesting (meaning, fucked up) things that one can do in Tokyo. punk, visual, cosplay, s/m, gothic, street trends, capsule hotels, bizarre magazines, random subcultures, and bad Engrish. . . . .also it is about tokyo's urban legends: square watermelons, Sanrio condoms, politically incorrect vending machines, etc."

Here, you'll find photos and first-person accounts of odd things in Japan -- like this beauty product expo filled with bizarre gadgets and obliquely degrading experiences. Image at left: "fake treatments helping beautify fake people." Elsewhere, the blogger discusses "PORNO GAME CHEAT CODES" (Link):

"Welcome to REBEL 100. apparently for some guys, not only is it too difficult to have sex with living human females, it's ALSO TOO DIFFICULT TO SCORE WITH THEM IN X-RATED VIDEOGAMES TOO. here is the concept behind rebel 100: guys are getting turned down by PORN."

Here's another winning entry (Link):

"I noticed that JAPANESE PUNKS HAVE THE MOST FESTOONED BUTTS OF ANYONE EVER. Like a middle-aged man. . . as the hair has gotten smaller, the butts have gotten bigger. Consider how many little doodads dangle from the cellphone of a stereotypical schoolgirl. Then multiply that by ten, and turn the cellphone into a denim-and-leather butt, and you have a punk. Today's punks have not just wallet chains and cigarettes in their behinds, but so much booty fashion I had to make a whole glossary (how did I conduct this research? I'll leave the actual process of asking people about their butts to your imagination.)"

Tons more like this at his main archive page. Link (Thanks, RogueAI)

August 29th was the annual "Bats Day in the Fun Park" -- an annual gathering of goths at Disneyland. Here are Livejournal entires and photogalleries from the event. Batty's Livejournal, Foxfire's Livejournal, DrunkRockers gallery one, DrunkRockers gallery two (via The Disney Blog)

Follow-up on this previous BoingBoing post from Cory: Link. As he steps out the door to "lead another sortie of dancing fools out into the streets of Manhattan," John Perry Barlow reports on the dance protests he's been organizing this week in NYC:

After four missions, Dancing in the Streets has exceeded my fondest expectations. It was my objective, as it usually is, that we afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, and this is what we have been doing by all appearances. We generally make the credentialed Republicans we encounter visibly nervous and spread good will and humor to most of the rest, including the police, who could well use it at the moment. People dig it when they see other people dancing in incongruous places. The most surprising people will join in, falling on the dance with a kind of hunger.

Republicans were hard to encounter at first. They are being quarantined behind the blue membrane of the NYPD (for whom my affection and respect has only increased through this experience). In addition, they spend much of their time inside the Garden having a lot less fun than we were. (As several of them told us.) Levels of engagement have increased with fine-tuning. The results vary, ranging from the Stepford husband whom we made so nervous that he walked into a plate glass window to the sweet young delegate from Oklahoma who tore off his tie and joined us for the balance of the evening.

We've had many interactions with the police. They certainly weren't interested in arresting us, though they kept us moving. Several of them said wistfully they wanted to join us. In general they only interfered because they are trying to maintain as familiar a peace as they can. Major variations from standard reality worry them. But not enough to go maximum on us.

Link

From alt-weekly New York Press:

# Delegates from Kansas spotting Dave Chappelle on the streets 50 times a day.
# Protest war stories from people who spent previous 364 days watching MTV.
# You find yourself annoyed by the protesters, until you pick up the Daily News and find the editors bitching about the supporters of "anarchy or communism or nihilism or baby seals or Bobby Seale -- whatever."
# That's when you wish that someone would do something really drastic. And then you're back to being annoyed with the protesters.
# Chinese Communist Party will think this is "what Democracy looks like," setting democratic reforms back 50 years.
# City should be emptier than this during Burning Man.

Link (via MeFi)

BoingBoing reader Alex points to this purportedly XXX image (organic teabagging?) ripped from the Kama Fruitra, and says, "This Ananova story contains images of Maoam fruit wrappers which appear to show fruit in sexual positions. A Catholic college has complained. What is interesting is that Haribo doesn't seem to have denied this interpretation, calling the packaging 'very racy,' and saying, 'The new wrapping is certainly fruitier than the old. But we have not had any other complaints. In fact until now the feedback has all been positive."

Link to news story. Link to Maoam website with barely legal hothothot fruity porn wrapper pics.

Update: BoingBoing reader ix says, "The reader quoted in your post says, A Catholic college has complained. That's not quite right. It seems, as this site says, that it has been a joke by graduates (abiturienten) of a catholic school (jesuitenkolleg zu sankt blasien - really, more a highschool than a college) back in March. Not really hot this story, but a German magazine made it a story again a couple of day ago (more on that here: Link)."

My short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More, has won the 2004 Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, winning out over such worthy competitors as Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Robert Charles Wilson's Blind Lake. I am bursting with pride.

The Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is a prized and juried award. Based on excellence of writing, it will be presented annually to a Canadian writer who has had published a speculative fiction novel or book-length collection of speculative fiction any time during the previous calendar year. Named after the first novel by Phyllis Gotlieb, one of the first published authors of contemporary Canadian science fiction, the award consists of: a cash award of $1000 and a medallion which incorporates a specially designed "Sunburst" logo. The winner will receive his or her award in fall 2004.

Link

Scotto has converted my Microsoft DRM talk into pig-latin. Link

Science Fiction World, a Chinese magazine, recently published an issue with a translation of my story "Nimby and the D-Hoppers" (originally published in June 2003). They didn't ask first, so technically this is a "pirate" edition, but hell, I'm not all that worked up about it -- I'm pretty pumped to know that there are people in China reading my stuff (and for what it's worth, foreign publishers usually pay teeny little pittances for translation rights to short stories).

My only peeve here is that they never sent me a copy, and never put their translation on the Web. I sent 'em some email but they never answered.

So here's my challenge to the lazyweb: track down a copy of the September issue of Science Fiction World and re-type the story that starts on page 12 ("Technological Opposition and the Dimension-Hopper") and send it to me. I'll post it on the Internet and make it available under a Creative Commons license for free reproduction. Link (Thanks, Joel!)

HooptyRides is a new blog from "Mr Jalopy," an anonymous friend of mine whom I consider to be one of the best, most engaging obsessive writers I know. He's taken to refurbing beautiful old jalopies, and his lyrical and nutso descriptions of his loves are delightful.

To increase automotive safety, I installed seat belts and Jesus tapestry reupholstery. The seats are top quality vinyl with extremely desirable Jesus tapestries. The tapestries are not a matched set, but they go together very nicely. I have a great deal of reverence for this automobile, for Johnny Cash, for the settling of the West, for the big giant huge grandeur of Rocky Mountains, for the buffalo, for the railroads, for exploration and the Grapes of Wrath. I bought this car in Wyoming and drove it to Los Angeles. I was so grateful for the trip and for the arrival, so relieved it was over and so disappointed to hit the Pacific Ocean with nowhere else to go, that I felt, these seat covers, this overarching presence in the front seat was the perfect answer to the trip taken. I have tried to explain this when asked in parking lots. It is a feeling that you get when driving in hailstorms in Yellowstone and under a layer of dust in Zion, it does not translate to Von's parking lot. When they ask, just say, 'Yes, I love Jesus.'

Link