* wordspy: earworm
These bendable, foldable speakers from Mikasa Shoji Co. of Japan are made from cloth woven with copper wire, polyester fiber and magnets. When the cloth vibrates, sound is produced. Evidently, this isn't the first time someone's created cloth speakers -- but these sure look sweet. As if you could wear them around your neck, like a sonic choker. Link (thanks, Beverly)
"Officers began to take the piñatas out of the back seat, and one [of the several pinatas in the car] seemed to be much heavier than the others," said Vince Bond, a spokesman for U.S. Customs & Border Protection. "This one had a little girl of approximately 4 or 5 years of age inside it."
The girl's mother also was found, curled up inside the car's trunk, and the girl's brother, who is about 9 years old, was found underneath the collapsible back seat.
The Salon du Livre Libre, an open book fair organized by Cogitateurs Agitateurs will take place from the 18th to the 22nd of November at Cafe Utopik, from noon to 10PM each day. Organized in response to the Salon du livre de Montreal, the event will inform the public about media concentration, copyright law, small-scale publishing and Open Content. Visitors to the Salon will be able to read free and public domain books and download them to CD-ROM. In addition, there will be conferences and panel discussions on freedom of information in an age of media concentration and commoditized culture. A collection of theoretical and analytical works revolving around the issue of Intellectual Property regimes will be published for the occasion, as well as a collection of original artwork. Entrance and all activities are free of charge.Link (Thanks, Robin!)
ExLibrisAnonymous is one of my favorite sources of cool junk from the Internet. They buy crappy library hardcover books of childrens' stories, teacher's manuals, and dull nonfiction titles, and spiral bind the front and back covers around a sheaf of blank white paper, throwing in some of the plates or pages from the original book in the middle. At $11 each with shipping, they're a great gift item. The store just posted a bunch of new "titles" today, and I bought six as Xmas gifts.
Link
What was once a gleaming futuristic utopia -- with an amazing kinetic energy from its various transportation vehicles above, on and below the Earth's surface -- has become a rundown has-been-land due to the inadequately budgeted Tomorrowland '98 project that essentially stripped-bare what had been one of Disneyland's most popular areas...Link (via The Disney Blog)The infrastructure for these marvels remains largely intact. What a shame it would be to pass on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to preserve Walt's 1959 wonders for future generations. Walt's fleet of submarines, once his pride and joy -- were built to last, and have survived to date. But the clock is ticking...
We at SaveDisney.com would like to support the restoration of Submarine Voyage -- whether its a retooling into a more-current Finding Nemo storyline, or a simple refreshing and rededication of the classic attraction.
"The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war," Ashcroft said...Link (via Lawgeek)"Courts are not equipped to execute the law. They are not accountable to the people," Ashcroft said.
Today's Worth1000 photoshopping contest is on a theme near to my heart: if pirates ran the world.
Link
MoveOn.org is a politically progressive organization that engages in online activism. For the most part, its work consists of sending out action alerts to its members via email lists. Often, these alerts will ask subscribers to send letters to their representatives about time-sensitive issues, or provide details about upcoming political events. Although people on the MoveOn.org email lists have specifically requested to receive these alerts, many large ISPs regularly block them because they assume bulk email is spam. As a result, concerned citizens do not receive timely news about political issues that they want. Often, MoveOn.org's staff doesn't discover that the mail isn't getting through for days or weeks, and even when it does, ISPs respond slowly to "unblock" requests or refuse to explain why email has been confiscated. Although ISPs may have the best of intentions, what we see in this scenario—one that is all too common—is free speech being chilled in the service of blocking spam.LinkIn their zeal to stop spam, many organizations and companies are blocking the delivery of wanted messages, especially those sent through email lists. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most blocking processes are not transparent to the email sender or recipient, and email users are generally given little or no control over which emails are blocked. Instead, system administrators, creators of spam-blocking tools, and ISPs all too often attempt to predict what mail a recipient does and does not want. As a result, email users rarely receive all legitimate messages sent to them.
PocketBeeb is an emulator for the old BBC Microcomputer (yes, the British Broadcasting Corporation used to have Acorn manufacture a "public-service" PC for them, which in one reason why the UK has so many ass-kicking games programmers today), that runs on the Game Boy Advance. I loved this from the release notes: "Basic, Acorn DFSi, OS 1.2 roms (c) 1981 Acorn Computers Ltd. Used without permission... but then who would you ask?"
Link
(via Waxy)
Developed by Marian Wallace and Marian Wilde, the show is a work-in-progress that, with your help, could air all over the country. RE/Search says they "are looking into syndication to other areas and are interested in contact information for your town's public access station." Link"Now is your chance to see V. Vale interview Dirk Dirksen, Mabuhay Gardens impresario from 1974-1984--early punk rock! With rare photos and footage - mostly in the first ten minutes, so don't be late! Be ready to sit for an uninterrupted hour for this riveting show. Stay through the final segment: The Mutants on stage with Dirk at the Mabuhay circa 1978 starting their last public performance of 'Insect Lounge.'
Also includes a 'Counterculture Show-n-Tell' with Yoshi from Japan telling about his "incredibly strange book collection" --very 'amusing'""
Let me address this issue by invoking another physics principle: conservation of mass. More specifically, let me talk about the conservation of carbon atoms. When you digest food, its carbon atoms enter your blood. Unless they are expelled from your body, they add to your weight. But here is the salient observation: the only effective way your body has to get rid of digested carbon is to combine it with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, and then expel it through your lungs. Unless you breathe out the carbon, you gain weight.Link
Here are some numbers, taken from books on exercise physiology. Fat, protein, and sugar all contain about 0.1 gram of carbon per food calorie consumed. So if you digest 2,000 calories of food (a typical daily diet for adults) then you take in about 200 grams of carbon. At rest, each breath exhales about 0.5 liter of air containing about 1 percent carbon, for about five milligrams per breath. After a day at 12 breaths per minute, you get rid of about 120 grams of carbon. That’s less than you ate, so you’ll gain weight.
This little paper dragon is folded in such a way that when you turn it, it appears as though it is turning its head to face you. I guess it's like those negative busts at the Haunted Mansion. The video for this is neat. Link (via Sensible Erection)
Kevin Kelm made a robot that looks like someone taking a dump. You can listen to the soundtrack at his site.
RoboDump is a robot. Sort of. And it poops. Sort of. Forever. A horrible, never-ending bowel movement complete with straining grunts, horrific gas, splashes, and pee sounds.
I snuck RoboDump into the men's room at the office. Unfortunately, today turned out to be the day of a board meeting. Whoops! It still went over well; the office was abuzz all morning with gossip about the guy in the bathroom. Several people theorized it was the CFO. The janitor commented to someone in the hallway that he wanted to clean the restroom but "this guy's been in there all morning."
Parents and students say they are outraged and offended by a proposed band name and song scheduled for a high school talent show in Boulder this evening, but members of the band, named Coalition of the Willing, said the whole thing is being blown out of proportion. The students told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver they are performing Bob Dylan's song "Masters of War" during the Boulder High School Talent Expose because they are Dylan fans. They said they want to express their views and show off their musical abilities.LinkBut some students and adults who heard the band rehearse called a radio talk show Thursday morning, saying the song the band sang ended with a call for President Bush to die. Threatening the president is a federal crime, so the Secret Service was called to the school to investigate. Students in the band said they're just singing the lyrics and not inciting anyone to do anything.
The 1963 song ends with the lyrics: "You might say that I'm young. You might say I'm unlearned, but there's one thing I know, though I'm younger than you, even Jesus would never forgive what you do … And I hope that you die and your death'll come soon. I will follow your casket in the pale afternoon. And I'll watch while you're lowered down to your deathbed. And I'll stand o'er your grave 'til I'm sure that you're dead."
New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell gave a talk at PopTech about a subject in his forthcoming book on human nature. This MP3 file has some great stuff in it about Herman-Miller's Aeron chair (which everyone hated when they first saw it but has gone on to become the best selling office chair and winner of lots of design awards) and Pepsi vs. Coke ("sip tests" are no good because people like sweeter drinks if they're having only a sip, but they prefer less sweet if they are drinking a whole can).
I thought the paradox of the triangle test Gladwell talks about is especially interesting. If you give a person two unmarked glasses, one containing Pepsi and the other containing Coke, they'll have an 80% change of being able to tell which is which. But if you introduce a third glass, containing either Coke or Pepsi, they odds that they'll be able to identify the odd drink is reduced to 33%, or chance.
Lots of excellent stuff in this half-hour talk. I can't wait for the book.
"Defendant's failure to warn plaintiff of the potential dangers negligently provided plaintiff with the belief she was safe in walking near the train tracks," the suit states.(Thanks, Jessica Hemerly!)
The filing does not state why Frankhouser failed to hear the oncoming train and get out of the way.
A Florida-based company called Trakstar came to Hollywood earlier this week to demo a new, two-part tech system they say is the solution to the illicit capture of movies in theaters. The system is comprised of two parts. First, a camcorder-spotting tool (which looks like Darth Vader's head) that automatically scans, detects, and photographs recording devices in the audience and warn security of their suspected presence. The second, an audio watermarking tool that creates an invisible sonic tag to lead law enforcement back to the original location, time, and date on which an ill-gotten movie file was obtained.
Because the system involves photographing audience members in the general vicinity of a suspected device -- and it can be triggered by "false positives" like camera-less cellphones -- the technology is likely to alarm privacy advocates. Critics point out that the system would need to be adopted by nearly all theater chains in order to have impact. And the system won't do anything to stop pre-release leaks that originate inside movie studios or post-production facilities themselves.
Link to Wired News storySome of the company's staff members have backgrounds in military and defense technology, and the PirateEye camcorder-detection system they built was derived from technology originally created for the Defense Department to detect sniper scopes and land mines in combat environments.
During the recent Hollywood demo, not all of the camcorders and pinhole devices planted by participants were spotted by PirateEye during the first demo attempt. Subsequent rounds appeared to locate all of the devices, but also caught more than one "false positive," including one participant's cell phone, which contained no camera, but a light-emitting display. Gladstone said future refinements to the system, which is still in development, would improve accuracy before commercial release.
But because the PirateEye system photographs the area near any object that triggers a positive response from the system -- and that area may include innocent audience members who simply happen to be seated next to the suspected device -- the technology will likely generate protest among privacy advocates.
LinkWhat is it like seeing the Mandelbrot set emblazoned on T-shirts and posters?
I'm delighted. I always felt that science as the preserve of people from Oxbridge or Ivy League universities - and not for the common mortal - was a very bad idea.
Even though most people view it as a beautiful image and ignore the underlying mathematics?
That's right. Yet there is nothing more to this than a simple iterative formula. It is so simple that most children can program their home computers to produce the Mandelbrot set.
LinkThe initiative is designed to cut the number of house burglaries in the county by warning criminals of their fate if they re-offend. The message on the reverse of the cards reads: "If you don't want to end up here... stop offending!"
The White Room is a series of "photos" generated with the game Max Payne 2, documenting a staged in-game murder. Check it out: "By transforming the game environment into a ready-made urban studio space, the objects and interiors were altered using the in-game weapons with the gore from dead enemies being used to 'paint' the sets before being unceremoniously blasted out of view and the scene captured. The events implied never happened in the game, they are not representations of 'real-life' crimes nor are they illustrations of fictional crime stories. These are silent witnesses, containers demanding context, they are waiting places."
Link
(via Wonderland)
The International Truck and Engine Corporation and the US Army are showing off the oxymoronically-named Smart Truck 3, the replacement for the Humvee. The beast weighs 3,000 pounds more than the H2 and is three inches taller and four feet longer. Amazingly though, it apparently guzzles less gas. From the Independent:
"The army also wants the vehicles to be marketed to other customers such as government agencies or regular Joes who only feel right using a stepladder to get behind thewheel.Link (Thanks, David Steinberg!)
The commercial version would not have the electronics designed to detect anthrax, the Kevlar armouring on the underside, the night-vision cameras and the 25-inch LCD touch-screen computer monitors."
Are DRM schemes hurting my career? I suppose the answer depends on how one defines a career. Is my career the business model though which I earn the princely sums (not!) that I am paid to commit prose in public? Is my career the collection of all the sentences I have ever typed that have gone on to be published, either in ink or in digits, even if they are now out of print? Is it the size of my readership, even if many of you have just stumbled across my stuff here in the pages of Asimov’s? Or is it my reputation among readers who remember my work and would look for more Kelly stories if they weren’t too hard to acquire?Link (Thanks, Jim!)The way I see it, readers and rep are what really matter to a writer. Dollars should follow from a satisfied readership, although exactly how this happens in these times of technological and economic innovation is not immediately apparent, alas. I do believe that the net has irretrievably compromised twentieth-century notions of intellectual property and that no amount of DRM shenanigans is going to turn back the copyright clock.
# "Welcome to the Orgasm & BrainWash Engineering Center where BrainWash is defined as an alternation of gene and enzyme expression in your 3 brains - the head, gut and pelvic cavity."
# "We have a complete orgasm solution for the loving couples under the heaven and on the earth, maybe under the earth too if they are alive."
Link. Don't miss the tinfoil-beanie-cap prosaic brilliance of this item in Dr. Lin's fuck-FAQ: "Vibrator - the Weapon of Mass Destruction or Pleasure?" Link. The good doctor also weighs in on such topics as animal copulation and electron sex. (via MeFi).
Iris Chang, the acclaimed author of The Rape of Nanking was found dead today of an apparent self inflicted gun-wound in Northern California. The importance of her book cannot be overstated, and it's a true loss. Rumors, of course, are already flying that it may not have been suicide, but murder because of her next book which looked at American forces in Bataan. Rumors of course are rumors, and she was known for suffering from depression.Snip from San Jose Mercury News coverage:
[Ignatius Ding, a retired engineer and personal friend] remembers her study, the room where she wrote, as "being like a shrine," its walls festooned with photos of Nanking atrocities, maps and documents."She would sit in there and just look at all those photographs,'' Ding said. "She was like a zombie.'' (...) Chang also wrote Thread of the Silkworm, a 1995 book about a Chinese scientist who was deported and later went on to create China's missile and space program.Link (reg required, or try this)
If you've got a podcast grabber like iPodder, aim it at this link. And you should grab a .3gp video, shot with the Nokia 7610 cameraphone, that I shot in North Beach, San Francisco a couple of weeks ago while waiting for Laurenn McCubbin to pick me up in her little chariot. .3gp is viewable in a current version of Quicktime -- older versions will probably call out for the .3gp plugin. Obviously, this isn't going to be much use if you have the iPodder-iTunes-iPod direct filling set up. But it illustrates how easily you can shoot video, dump it into a file and broadcast it.Link
Link to CSM story, Link to Tiny Ninja Theater website (thanks Susannah!)Shakespeare probably didn't have a toy in mind for the title role when he penned his vengeful tale. But that was before a frustrated, 20-something actor decided it was time someone performed classical theater with a cast that can fit in a suitcase. Tiny Ninja Theater - now an international touring company - is presenting its latest production at Performance Space 122 (PS122) in Manhattan this month. "Hamlet" is the third major Shakespeare work the plastic cast has taken on, having already conquered "Macbeth" and "Romeo and Juliet" since its debut in 2000. A simple principle guides the troupe: "There are no small parts, only small actors."
"They don't complain, they're very hard workers," deadpans Mr. Weinstein on opening night, Oct. 28, after shedding the dark shirt and overalls he wears over street clothes for the performance. "Sometimes you can push them too hard. But they'll leave you in the lurch, too.... If I forget a line, they're not going to cue me, you know?
"
YOU ARE HEREBY GRANTED THE FOLLOWING RIGHTS:And it just gets better from there, as the story rockets forward in a scene that combines the best of Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and The Onion:* The right to read once, in its entirety, the BOOK.
* The right to store in any biological storage device a derivative work in the form of a personal memory or recollection of the BOOK and its contents.
* The right to advise others to purchase for themselves their own licenses for use of the BOOK.
* The right to repeat aloud, without the aid of technical means of amplification—including but not limited to megaphones, public address systems, streaming audio, and cupped hands—passages from the BOOK not to exceed three (3) consecutive sentences, or a total of eight (8) sentences.
* The right to a living wage and to a secondary and post-secondary education of modest quality.
* The right to purchase products not produced or manufactured by the COMPANY, including any products necessary to personal hygiene or nutrition, but excluding Big Mac brand sandwiches and any item fairly characterized as a "fresh wipe."
* The right to walk here and there for purposes such as you determine.
I wore a gray suit to my first deposition, a shapeless, off-the-rack sort of a number festooned with cargo pockets and illogical darts. 100% Worsted wooline. Summer weight. Hand stitched. 38 Regular. $49.95 at the GAP I passed on my way in. I left my old pants in the dressing room. They recycle them. Rebuild and recertify. That sort of thing. Pre-owned pants. I think they have that.100K PDF Link (Thanks, Chris!)It took me longer than I expected to find the place. All of the exits seemed to be for an enchanted wood. 318b: Deerlick; 318c: Blue Mountain; 318d: Beaver Meadows. I was looking for Brosnan Parkway. It dead-ends into Fishglass just short of the exit. No sign. Nothing.
The place was in a strip mall: Denny's, Donut Star, Ringo's Modified Produce, Fantastic Wok. It was a Deposition Lounge. I've heard that On The Record has better food (fried finger waffles, little ginger pies), but the Lounge generally has plusher seats and the private rooms are quite a bit more reRecord is out in the Valley.
"In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism, as previous studies have shown, but perhaps more surprisingly also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin," Abadie said.LinkInstead, Abadie detected a peculiar relationship between the levels of political freedom a nation affords and the severity of terrorism. Though terrorism declined among nations with high levels of political freedom, it was the intermediate nations that seemed most vulnerable.
Like those with much political freedom, nations at the other extreme - with tightly controlled autocratic governments - also experienced low levels of terrorism.
So the Shaw customers went to DSL Reports, a community site for posting about DSL and other high-speed providers, and they found that they were not alone and not imagining things. Lots of Shaw customers were getting really crummy performance out of their Internet connections.
Then someone claiming to be a Shaw insider posted an explanation: Shaw had secretly installed a packet-filter on its network that was using hidden rules to silently discard some of its customers' packets. And they'd instructed their tech people to lie about it when customers called in and asked.
It might have been a fake, but not long after, DSL Reports got a letter from Shaw's lawyers telling them that this was confidential info from a Shaw employee and that they'd be sued if they didn't take it offline, so it looks like its true (says DSL Reports, "Needless to say, we've never bent over for an ISP upset at bad publicity, or forked over anyones identity, and we're not about to start.")
Here's the facts, then:
The problem here isn't really the levy -- blanket license fees, including levies, are actually not a bad way of solving some copyright problems -- but what you get in exchange for it. The levy here would cover all Internet users, including institutions that have the right to re-use work without permission or payment (like schools and libraries), and it won't confer any substantial rights upon you.
That means that even if you pay the levy for the use of copyrighted works on the Internet, you won't get the right to share music, or download movies, or use screenshots in your PowerPoint presentation. When a radio station pays a blanket license fee, it gets the right to play all the music ever recorded. When you pay your levy, you'll get virtually no rights at all -- except the right to get your ass sued off if someone decides that you're being naughty.
The standing committee on Canadian Heritage, which presented this recommendation along with several other potentially disastrous ideas, heard lots of learned, substantive testimony on why this is bad for Canada. It roundly ignored it all. The report that Heritage delivered is a one-sided smear against the Internet and a naked grab for a few giant copyright holders at the expense of new entrants to the market and the general public. The people responsible for this should be removed from their duties -- it's inexcusable.
If Canada is going to extract a levy from Canadians, then Canadians should get something in return: unlimited access to noncommercial, educational, and archival use of copyrighted works on the Internet. A levy without something in return is just an exercise in picking your pocket -- and you shouldn't stand for it. Sign the petition today.
The best answer to copyright reform has always been to maintain balance, the lawyers say. Society wants to maintain creative incentives, so laws are passed to protect creators; but society must also have access to those works to share in their knowledge.Link (Thanks, Ian!)"The danger of WIPO is that it threatens that balance," Mr. Geist said, "and replaces social rights with absolute rights."
There's also the potential for the recommendations to have a direct economic impact.
"The committee ignored solid evidence that the levy on blank CDs [meant to compensate artists for pirated content] would double as a result of the national treatment requirements of the WIPO treaties," Mr. Knopf said. "This could quickly cost Canadians more than $100-million annually.
"We could end up with the worst of all dystopian worlds," he added. "You could pay the levy on a CD and get sued anyway" over the disc's content.
Translator II: Grower is a robot that draws green lines of "grass" on gallery walls at varying heights depending on the amount of carbon dioxide it senses in the room. From creator Sabrina Raaf's artist's statement:
"The metaphoric relation is that grass needs CO2 in nature to grow. Here, my simulated grass needs the breath of human visitors in order to thrive. The height of the 'grass' directly reflects on the human activity or traffic in the space. The more people that visit that space, the more amenable that space is to my machine’s ability to create. The relationship between Translator II: Grower, the space, and the public becomes a metabolic one - one of co-evolution. This piece makes visible how art institutions depend on their visitors to make them 'healthy' spaces for new art to evolve and flourish within."Link (via Near Near Future)
File under "only in Japan." Attractive womanoid clown sans clownface, pimping a hot hot barely legal sandwich sold in Japanese McDonaldses, or whatever the plural form is. Maybe the new McGrand Tomato would taste good with some Boo Bee Juice. Link to online version of TV commercial, in windows media only. (via)
Update: Sweet mother of special sauce! There's an ambiguously gendered dude version, too. Oh-so-emo. Link
Link to book.It has a long history of use as a weapon by the US military, and the legal issues around it are rather contentious.
The book A Higher Form of Killing, by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman, contains a very small ref to use of WP in WWII, when there was a dispute about its use between the British and the US: the US was not bound by the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare (which the British felt use of WP was prohibited by) and the British yielded to the US opinion. (The US didn't ratify that protocol until 1975, but with some reservations on the use of riot control agents: Link.) And this article refers to the current Geneva Protocol on Incendiary Weapons, which the US is not a party to: Link.
I recommend taking a look at A Higher Form of Killing, which contains all sorts of interesting information and a few very neat photos, including one of the massive apparatus used to create anthrax bombs during WWII. (It also contains a few rather gruesome photos.)
Image: White phosphorous rounds explode on enemy positions north of the Han River prior to U.N. offensive during March 1951. Link
Vodafone will begin offering the one-minute epidosdes in January in the United Kingdom, coinciding with the start of the fourth season of the show on a satellite V service.Link (via unwired, thanks richard)
For every 100 grams of dried caterpillars, there are about 53 grams of proteins, about 15 per cent of fat and about 17 per cent of carbohydrates, according to the study. The insects are also believed to have a higher proportion of protein and fat than beef and fish with a high energy value...Link (via Science Blog)
“Due to their high nutritional value in some regions, flour made from caterpillars is mixed to prepare pulp given to children to counter malnutrition,” said (FAO researcher Paul) Vantomme. “Contrary to what many may think, caterpillars are not considered an emergency food, but are an integral part of diet in many regions according to seasonal availability. They are consumed as a delicacy.”
"A key issue is the implications of these technologies for personal privacy. If there are eventually technologies that externalize internal states, who has a right to access that information? And what about cases where that information could be taken against people’s will, or without their knowledge? Are we going to start implanting electrodes in the brains of the suspected terrorists in Guantánamo Bay? Certainly not yet—there’s nothing we could get out of that. But research is being funded by the Departments of Homeland Security and of Defense for things like lie detection technologies using functional MRI or near-infrared light. These technologies can be used coercively in a way polygraphs, for example, can’t. If you’re not willing to cooperate with a polygraph, there’s really nothing they can do. But you aren’t necessarily going to need to cooperate for some of these technologies; they can, theoretically, be used covertly. They may be used on suspected criminals or enemies of the state, or on you and me when we’re going through airports. Near-infrared technology may someday employ an undetectable spot of light on your forehead. Research on ways to take what used to be private thoughts and make them accessible will challenge our laws and our thinking about what privacy means."Link
Amy's Robot sez, "Tonight was round 1 of the Jeopardy College Tournament. One of the contestants, Kermin from Carnegie Mellon University, had a commanding lead (well over $10K) going into Final Jeopardy. His final wager had Alex Trebek scratching his head, but Kermin was clearly sending a message to fellow computer nerds. His wager: $1337. For the uninitiated, in 'leetspeak' 1337 translates to 'leet' or 'elite.'"
Link
(Thanks, Amy's Robot!)
Mr. Gonzales effectively endorsed torture in America's "war on terrorism," as detailed in this Newsweek article:
As a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers -- and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places. While no one deliberately authorized outright torture, these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners through isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation -- methods that the Red Cross concluded were "tantamount to torture."Link. And the NY Times has this series of excerpts from Mr. Gonzales' legal writings: Link.
In October, The EFF filed a motion to unseal the Seizure Order in a US District Court -- background Link. This update published on an indymedia site today includes the court's response to EFF's motion to unseal. Snip: "The U.S. government claims Indymedia hard drives were seized as part of an international 'criminal terrorism investigation,' and thus the U.S. District Court's gag order should be upheld." Link to full text of court's response.
Link to previous BB posts on the matter.
The Register has more: Link
Thirsty? Depending on what floats your proverbial boat, perhaps a cockolada or a nice glass of Boo Bee Juice would hit the spot. The former is an adult-oriented beverage novelty resembling an anatomical part unique to male persons. The latter is an actual children's drink product with a snort-inducing name (no, it doesn't come in Tara Reid flavor). (thanks Fleshbot)
"Usually we keep the gloves on," said Army Capt. Erik Krivda, of Gaithersburg, Md., the senior officer in charge of the 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2-2 tactical operations command center. "For this operation, we took the gloves off."LinkSome artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns. Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, "The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted."
While not a site, I found it interesting while being a student at UT Austin, that the US Army recruiters have decided that spamming students is a viable means of recruitment. So desperate must they be to get people to fight in Iraq. I'm also disturbed by the apparently "Universities must turn over contact info to local army recruiting offices". I thought Selective Service covered people attempting to avoid the draft.Link
BB reader Adam Rakunas says,
"Indymedia has video of two tanks (well, LAV-25s, but who's gonna quibble with an armored cannon on Wilshire Boulevard?) at an anti-war protest outside the Federal Building in Westwood, CA. Whether the folks at the Army Reserve Center up the street at Federal got bored or the Police State is flexing its muscles, I dunno. Personally, I think these guys just knew that parking in Westwood is a bitch and borrowed the appropriate vehicle."
Link.
Update: BoingBoing reader Bob says, "I have photos of the armored personnel carriers in the streets of Westwood at the antiwar demo." Link
BB reader Rudy says, "I noticed a followup post on indymedia claiming to have run into the vehicles the next morning at a parade. The author goes to claim that the operators claimed to be at the protest and they arived there after getting lost." Whups.
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