So says Lemonodor blog (John Wiseman), pointing to a Twitter stream attributed to the conceptual artist Jenny Holzer: Link. Whether it's real or fake (my money's firmly on the latter), it's good stuff. (Thanks, Javier Candeira)
Reader comment: J Hyde says,
Surely Othar Trigvorsen: Gentleman Adventurer! also deserves to use twitter. Link.
Max Blumethal went to the College Republican National Convention Tour and discovered that these well-groomed young men and women strongly support the war in Iraq. But when Blumenthal asked them why they weren't fighting in Iraq, the students offered creative and entertaining excuses. Link
The latest Executive Order from the War Criminal Administration facilitates and sanctions the taking away of property of anyone who is deemed to be "undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people". Left in those terms, it isn't too much of a stretch to envision this Administration deciding that any particularly vocal critic of the Iraq occupation is "undermining efforts" and thus a target for seizure of property or assets, Fifth Amendment be damned.As Wonkette sums it up: "If the White House decides that you are in any way 'undermining efforts' in Iraq, or related to Iraq or pretty much anything else, the Treasury Department is authorized to seize your money, property, stocks, etc. The pride is back!"Big news indeed, and yet it has received scant little attention in the media. Shameful in every regard, but it troubles me even more that this latest criminal act has crossed a new threshold in reckless disregard for the US Constitution, and yet hardly a soul even knows about it.
Link to the White House's Executive Order
Reader comment:
Robert says:
Sorry to criticize, but you screwed up on the White House Executive Order story.Greg says:The Order clearly only applies to people who have "committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of: ... (B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people"
In other words, it doesn't apply to anyone who is "undermining efforts." It requires violence + undermining efforts. You left off the first part. I'm not saying that this makes the order any better, but at least it limits it.
Further, the President cannot take away property of US citizens by fiat. That's prohibited by the Fifth Amendment. This is directed to foreign nationals who are holding their assets in the US.
Robert is incorrect about the scope of the executive order and who it applies to.1) it has a broad theoretical reach, i.e., anyone who the executive branch says "pose[s] a significant risk of committing" acts of violence that "undermine efforts" in Iraq. It's like the Dept. of Pre-Crime.
2) the EO applies to "U.S. persons," a group which includes U.S. citizens, not just foreign nationals parking their money in the U.S.
Talking Points Memo has some analysis from the ACLU and other experienced voices on the topic.
In the wake of nearly 200 people going down in flames with a Brazilian airliner this week, we took an exclusive look at 36 years’ worth of NTSB reports and seating charts. The best way to live through a disaster in the sky? Move to the back of the Airbus.Link
Reader comment: Dan Hoyt says,
In the 1948 book No Highway (Made into the 1951 movie No Highway in the Sky), Nevil Shute makes the point that the rear of a plane is the safest place to be. He has his scientist protagonist tell another character to sit there if she has to fly in a plane he knows to have a fatal design flaw.
Last month the FBI sent a program it calls a "computer and internet protocol address verifier," or CIPAV, to the owner of an anonymous MySpace profile linked to bomb threats against a high school near Seattle. The code led the FBI to 15-year-old Josh Glazebrook, a student at the school, who pleaded guilty Monday to making bomb threats, and related charges. From my article:Link to Kevin's story. The FBI search warrant affidavit describing the CIPAV is here: Link (pdf)The spyware program gathers a wide range of information, including the computer's IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer's registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL. The CIPAV then settles into a silent "pen register" mode, in which it lurks on the target computer and monitors its internet use, logging the IP address of every computer to which the machine connects for up to 60 days.
Four federal inmates were indicted Tuesday on allegations that they copyrighted their names, then demanded millions of dollars from prison officials for using the names without authorization.LinkThe inmates sent demand notices for payment to the warden of the El Reno federal prison and filed liens against his property. They then hired someone to seize his vehicles, freeze his bank accounts and change the locks on his house. Unfortunately, the person they hired turned out to be an FBI agent.
[Counselor name] is available to speak with parents and children, as well as the media, on how to cope with feelings of grief and loss. This is a particularly timely issue with the release of the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows scheduled for release this Saturday, July 21, 2007. Recent articles have sparked rumors suggesting that one or more main characters will die. This could have a serious impact on children, millions of whom have grown up reading, watching and profoundly enjoying the characters and storylines of the Harry Potter series.Link (via needcoffee, thanks John "Widgett" Robinson)
I work for a company who does wireless networks and IP camera systems. We had some equipment up there that wasn't working properly and when the opportunity arose in talking to them I basically made it absolutely clear that I would definitely have to go up there to fix it.Link
Young children can insert their hands into the oven's opening and get their hands or fingers caught, posing an entrapment and burn hazard.
I posted the first recall of the hideous oven in February. The old design (left) was much better, and prettier, too.
Last weekend (inspired by Merlin Mann's recent de-cluttering kick) I happily threw my kids' Easy Bake Oven in the trash. Maybe I'll build them a dorkbake oven to replace it. Link (Thanks, Bob!)
In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer — many thousand times faster than most residential connections... The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between...The article says she uses her connection to read online newspapers, and nothing more. Link (Thanks, Michael!)
Reader comment:
Kris says:
Here is a newscast about the behemoth in question. The creator, Peter Lothberg, is interwieved (in swedish) and we find out that the first thing he did after installing the huge contraption was to drive into town and purchase a computer to test it on, since his mom didn´t have one...
# 1776: July 19, 1776 – Sambucus ebulus. Dwarf elder blows. Fungi begin to appear.Link.# 1772: July 19, 1772 – Some thunder & hail. Smart showers.
# 1771: July 19, 1771 – Tabanus bovinus. Trenched out celeri. Wind tears the hedges & flowers.
# 1768: July 19, 1768 – Young swallows are able to take flies for themselves.
Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)Stop fumbled lit cigarettes and dropped lit ashes from burning holes in senior's clothing. Flame retardent apron stretches across chairs armrest to prevent hot cigarette end from falling onto clothing or between you and the chair.
Darren McFadden, a player on the Arkansas Razorbacks football team, drives this Crown Victoria with a lifted suspension and huge rims. Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)"Zi had provided all the cardboard and asked the vendor to soak it. It's all cheating," the paper quoted a government notice as saying.Link to Reuters story (Thanks, Xeni!)
Beijing TV had apologized for failing to check the report's authenticity and said it would make efforts to improve staff ethics, the paper added.
China is reeling from a series of tainted food and drug scandals that have sparked criticism at home and abroad.
The deaths of patients in Panama from mislabeled drug ingredients from China, deadly toxins in pet food exported to the United States and food laced with hazardous antibiotics and chemicals have raised fears about the safety of China's surging exports.
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Link to full text.
Why did I expect it to be easier this year? Going to Srebrenica was never easy. It is called a "high risk business" by the local Serbian police, even in Belgrade.
On the night before the Srebrenica anniversary, we Women in black had a commemorative standing in the Square of the Republic, as has been our ritual for the past 12 years. Standing soberly in black with lit candles, holding the banner SREBRENICA Not to be Forgotten, we stood in the city's largest public square, without press coverage because the Serbian press much prefers to forget.
One hundred and three standing women were guarded by one hundred policemen, almost a one-to-one action. We were separated as a political virus from our non-existent audience, though crowds in past years have insulted us and beaten us.
Srebrenica is now a closed issue, according to local officials. After the sentence in the Hague tribunal last May which declares the Serbia government not guilty of genocide -- merely guilty of not preventing it -- the Serbian authorities as well as the local silent majority can live in denial with official global approval.
This makes us the crazy women, the fools who still ride in buses to pay due honors to the 400 fragmentary dead, who today joined 8000 others killed and missing, all buried in the Srebrenica mass graveyard after being cunningly scattered all over the region by their killers. One woman is burying the bones of her son for the third time, since his body was never found whole. Among those being re-buried today are four victims killed on video by the Scorpion paramilitaries.
Might the hive mind of fanfiction predict the plot of the seventh Harry Potter?LinkWe'll know in 2 days. At least four books (see below) aggregate the predictions for the final episode in the Potter series. Anticipating the course of beloved stories has a long tradtion. Novels were the new media of the eighteenth century. Readers loved the innovation they offered: complex characters depicted so vividly that they seemed to live beyond the story's pages. These full-bodied characters could be carried along serial episodes, or even lifted into other dramas and other media. This persistent life made reading novels hugely popular but it also tempted readers to transport these characters into their own stories. As soon as novels appeared, fans began writing their own alternative endings. Sequels to two of the first novels ever published, Robinson Crusoe, and Don Quixote, were issued by their authors primarily to preempt fan-written versions. Today we call that fan fiction. The universe of this derived work is very large; more than 10 million fanfic stories have been penned so far. Any popular fiction series you can name, from Jane Austen to Star Wars, will have thousands of extended stories written by avid fans.
Every new medium since the novel has engendered further fan fiction, and nothing has done more to boost the involvement of the audience with fictional characters than the internet. In two days the largest book phenomenon of the year, perhaps of the decade, culminates as millions of people dive into the seventh and final Harry Potter book. Preceding them is a small army of intense Harry Potter enthusiasts on the internet who have already laid out in great detail their predictions of exactly what will happen in book seven. For years they have been scrutinizing the dark corners and subtexts of the first six books with a diligence that any professor of literature would be proud of, and have rendered their analysis as speculative story plots.
Previously on BoingBoing:
MappyHour lets you scope out and plan your pub crawl before you leave the house or office. It includes happy hours (if available), drink specials, and even food to pour your beer on top of. It has many American cities and a couple of international ones (Sydney, Melbourne).
The biggest cities are the best developed, but users can add pubs, as well as ratings and reviews for any location. If there are no reviews for a bar, the site links to Yelp reviews. It also looks like the bars themselves can buy space on the site to list their drink special and hours.
Limitations: The review system’s a little wonky. I lost a review I wrote by trying to pinpoint the bars location better. Also, it only shows the nearest 50 bars to your location. If an excellent bar is the 51st closest, it won’t show up.
There are some competitors (Unthirsty, Stumbling Donkey), but MappyHour rules the roost. Link
A 10-year-old Nepali child who is revered as a living goddess in the Kumari tradition was fired from her sacred gig a few weeks ago for having traveled to the United States. During her US tour, she snapped lots of digital photos and shot lots much hi-def digital video, no doubt for her goddessblog. Today, there's news that religious authorities in Nepal will reinstate her as a living incarnation of holiness, after she goes through a series of cleansing rituals. Link (thanks michael)
Previously on BoingBoing:
Reader comment: andy carvin says,
More about the return of the Bhaktapur Kumari: Negotiations with Nepali religious authorities to restore her status had been going on for over a week, according to Marc Hawker, co-producer of the documentary Living Goddess. Since Marc and his colleagues had brought Sajani to the US for the premiere of their documentary, they felt compelled to assist her when religious authorities said they would remove her. When I spoke with Marc last weekend, film director Ishbel Whitaker had already been in Nepal for a week trying to work out the details, while Sajani awaited the results in India. Marc said he was flying out to join them for her return to Nepal, at which point she would fly back "as a bona fida goddess." They didn't want news of the deal to leak out until she returned home, in order for her family to avoid a media circus. Link.
An iphone-themed remake of the Pussycat Dolls "Dontcha," by GETV's Irina Slutsky, Facebook's Randi Jayne (Zuckerberg), David Prager of Revision3 and Nora McDevitt of PodTech.
Dontcha wish your cellphone was raw like me?Video Link (thanks, Eddie Codel!)
Dontcha wish you spent more than half a G?
The interview is transcribed from a recent episode of The RU Sirius Show. BB pal Jamais Cascio also joined in.
LinkJAMAIS CASCIO: Did Kennedy suspect that he had been sandbagged?
DAVID TALBOT: Yes. And he was furious. Afterwards, he famously threatened to shatter the CIA and scatter it to the winds. And he did fire the top two officials of the CIA -- Allen Dulles, who ironically later became the most active member of the Warren Commission (to investigate the assassination of JFK), and Richard Bissell. And he was constantly re-shuffling his Joint Chiefs, because they were some frightening characters as well. The head of the Air Force, Curtis LeMay, actually thought you could fight and win a nuclear war.
RU SIRIUS: LeMay comes across in this book as actually very anxious to just get right into a nuclear war. And there's another character -– Lyman Lemnitzer -- true psycho maniacs. Talk a little bit about these characters.
DT: Those are two of my favorites! Curtis LeMay was this cigar-chomping World War II hero who had devastated Japan with firebombing assaults during that war. He knew that, in the early '60s, America had massive nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. And he thought that was our window of opportunity to take the commies out. Do it now. We would, of course, suffer millions of casualties of our own, but he argued with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that you could still win the war as long as you had more weapons in the end.
RU: The one who dies with the most bombs wins.
Bridgitte says:
I just got back from Denmark, and couldn't resist taking pictures of the only character ice cream i saw for your collection. I don't know the character's back story - i think it's just something cute they do. Anyhow, I don't think they're much more skilled than we are, but you be the judge...
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Ice cream treat resembles heinous murderer
• Ice cream patent wars in the 1930s
• Expertly produced Korean red bean ice cream fish
• Tweety Bird popsicle doesn't look like Tweety Bird
• Bugs Bunny popsicle
• Turtle popsicle reflects pride in workmanship
• Popsicle parody ad
LinkI came up with the idea for this book, Digital Music – DIY Now! in early 2005. I’d just finished writing three books by myself and making two movies and wanted to do something different. I wanted to write another book, not by myself, but with some really smart buddies.
I wrote a proposal, pitched it to my agent, Matt Wagner of Fresh Books, and he secured a publisher, Que. Que is a well known publisher with a lot of decent tech books out, and they get their books into everywhere.
Que liked my idea of writing with several other experts, and I thought I’d enjoy the challenge of working with others. It seemed like a nice change from the isolation of writing a book by myself.
By was I wrong. It turned out to be a logistical nightmare.
At its peak, Schaeffer had 200 desktop computers working on the problem full time, although in later years he reduced this to 50 or so. "The problem is such that if I made a mistake 10 years ago, all the work from then on would be wrong," says Schaeffer. "So I've been fanatical about checking for errors."Link
Schaeffer believes the techniques he has developed could be applied to many real-world problems. He gives the example of scheduling the time and work required to build a complex machine such as the space shuttle. "With these techniques, you could optimise the use of your resources to build the shuttle for the least time or cost," he says.
'I'd put my hand back there and feel them moving. I thought it was blood coursing through my head,' said Dallas, of Carbondale.Link (via Fortean Times)
'I could hear them. I actually thought I was going crazy....'
The parasites, which were living in a pit 2- to 3- millimeters wide, were removed Thursday.
The pair, from Leeds, said the hoard was worth about £750,000 as a conservative estimate.Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)
They told the BBC News website: "We've been metal detecting for about five years; we do it on Saturdays as a hobby.
"We ended up in this particular field, we got a really strong signal from the detector... Eventually we found this cup containing the coins and told the antiquity authority.
"We were astonished when we finally discovered what it contained..."
It was probably buried for safety by a wealthy Viking leader during the unrest following the conquest of the Viking kingdom of Northumbria in AD927.
A spokeswoman for the (British Museum) said: "The size and quality of the hoard is remarkable, making it the most important find of its type in Britain for over 150 years."
Link (Thanks, Ian!)
The information, known as Exchangeable Image File Format (Exif) data, has already revealed that the camera used was a Canon Rebel 350. Because the model is three years old, the device would likely have been serviced at least once since it was purchased, in which case the owner's name would be known.The serial number itself would not necessarily give away the name of the owner, Canon said, as it can only match serial numbers with owners if the purchaser registers the device after buying it. Every time a Canon camera is serviced, however, the serial number and owner are logged together.
"In theory, we can find out which country the camera was sold in and in turn the warranty and service centre records in that country could be checked," Vic Solomon, a product intelligence officer at Canon's UK head office, said. "It would take a lot of work, but there's a good chance they could find him or her.
"From what we know, the device is one of the original Rebel cameras, probably a 350D, and given that they've been out for three years, it's likely the owner would have had it cleaned or repaired in that time."
I listen to Escape Pod every week and I'm never disappointed, but every now and again, they really hit one out of the park. This could be the most entertaining 22 minutes you spend this week.
“I read an interesting forum post last night,” my electric toothbrush told me over its low burr.“Thiff ouff thew be thood,” I said through my mouth of foam.
“It was!” he replied. “Using readily available components, Monkeymonkey turned his Intellibrush into a milk frother.”
I spit into the sink and set my toothbrush in its white ceramic charger. “What would I do with a milk frother?”
“Make cappucinos,” my toothbrush said, with a hint of resignation, as I rinsed and spit again.
“I don’t drink cappucinos,” I said.
“You c
Zack Kim performs a beautiful version of the Simpsons theme by playing two guitar at once. 