About.com's sexuality editor Cory Silverberg rips into a much-publicized American Journal of Psychiatry editorial from Oregon-based psychiatrist Dr. Jerald Block that calls for a diagnosis of “Internet addiction” to be added to the DSM (the list of mental disorders used by mental health professionals and insurance providers to classify people with diagnosable mental disorders). Silverberg writes...

[Block] argues that that “Internet addiction” is experienced primarily by people engaged in “excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging” and that its definition should include:

1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue.

He cites a few studies to support his theory but seems to believe that we’re already past the point of debating if such a thing as “Internet addiction” exists. Not to put too fine a point on it, we aren’t. Media responses to the editorial were predictable. Newspapers reported on it as if it were a new piece of empirical research, boldly claiming that spending too much time texting or being online was a mental disorder. Bloggers tried their best to mask their understandable anxiety behind defensive jokes about the possibility of being the first to get labeled.

I was particularly surprised by what seemed like a significant omission in the commentary. Of the 103 articles in Nexis and 92 articles linked from Google News that refer to Dr. Block’s editorial not one of them reported the fact that Dr. Block is the co-founder and president of SMARTguard, a company which owns a patent on technology that can be used to restrict computer access. It’s funny that no one mentioned it, since its right there in the editorial footnote.

Oh, busted! Link. Image: "Release Me," by TwistedAngelTx.

this is a magazine
googlehouse
average shoveler
white glove tracking
sheep films
neon bible
99 rooms

and the classics:
fubbs
hoogerbrugge
oculart

previously on web zen:
net.art.zen 2007

Link, Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Image: The Painter, from Hoogerbrugge.

Over at Wired's Danger Room blog, Sharon Weinberger today writes about recent purchases by private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide. The company bought a light attack counterinsurgency aircraft, and more than 24 other aircraft, under the name of an obscure aviation firm:

An Embraer Super Tucano was placed on the U.S. civil aircraft registry on February 21, 2008 under the name of EP Aviation LLC. Additionally, 28 other aircraft have been registered to this company, most over the past few months. The list includes 14 Bell 412 helicopters, as well as a number of fixed wing aircraft.

While Blackwater hasn't advertised this news, neither is it keeping it a state secret (EP Aviation isn't the sneakiest way to hide connections to Blackwater owner Erik Prince). A spokesperson for Blackwater, in fact, confirmed to Danger Room that EP Aviation is an affiliate of Blackwater.

Jane's Defence Weekly first reported last year that Blackwater was trying to get an import license for the Super Tucano. (The Super Tucano's recent registration was first reported as a small item in the April issue of Air Forces Monthly.) But what isn't clear is why the company would register these aircraft under the name EP Aviation LLC.

Link

On this day's date in 1953, the first 3D movie made by a major Hollywood studio hit screens. I was surprised to learn that it wasn't Jaws 3D House of Wax, but rather Man In The Dark. From Wired:

Man in the Dark was a noir film starring Edmond O'Brien, a remake of the 1936 Ralph Bellamy movie, The Man Who Lived Twice. As 3-D it was underwhelming -- the climactic roller-coaster scene was described as flat -- and it apparently wasn't much of a flick, either, at least not to a New York Times critic who called it "a conspicuously low-grade melodrama."

Link

Barron YoungSmith of The New Republic says:

I think you and your readers at Boing Boing will enjoy The New Republic’s fascinating slide-show: Terrifying Early-1950s Comic Book Covers.

These grim, pop-art images of severed heads and disintegrating human beings were selected by cultural critic David Hajdu, author of The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, to illustrate the comic book culture that created mass panic during the 1950s.The lurid content led to congressional hearings, widespread comic book burnings, and ultimately the censorship of the industry.

In addition, check out Part One of TNR’s debate between Hajdu and American culture guru Douglas Wolk: Are these grim images responsible for the marginalization of comic books throughout the late-20th century? Are we, just now, coming into the golden age of American graphic novels? Find out here.

Link

God bless Rob Cockerham. He's a reality hacker who conducts prankish experiments to test the limits of corporate intelligence and behavior. He's a national treasure and a personal hero. In 2006 I blogged about his credit card application experiment and the scary results.

This time around, Rob prank-tested GoldKit.com, an outfit that asks you to send them your "scrap gold" in exchange for a check:

I called the 800 number and was connected to a very nice gal. She was very polite and asked for my name, address and phone number. She promised to send a "Gold Kit".

A few days later, their package arrived. It was a business reply envelope, a thick plastic bag, and a brochure about the gold recycling. I was ready to go!

Actually, I was a little disappointed, because I wanted to write an article about how incredibly terrible their offering price is. Unfortunately, they don't actually tell you how much they pay for used gold.

The look and frequency of their television commercials did nothing to establish them as a legitimate market-rate merchant of precious metals, so I was not at all surprised that they didn't name their price.

Lippencott employs the following system:

* You send in your gold items.

* Lippencott decides what they will pay for the items.

* Lippencott sends you a check in the mail.

* If the check is acceptable, you cash it. If not, send the check back and they will return your gold.

To test their system and discover their exchange price, I should have sent in a known quantity of pure gold.

Unfortunately, real gold is very rare, and hella expensive. Even after checking the whole recycling bin and both garbage cans, I found that I had absolutely no gold scraps in the house.

I grabbed some doo-dads out of the junk drawer and some gold spray-paint out of the garage.

Soon I had a gold bottle cap, a gold stem from a bunch of grapes, a gold pop-top, a gold zip-tie, a gold 'S' hook, a gold nut and the elusive gold nickel.

In all, a nice sack of treasure!

Visit Rob's site, Cockeyed.com for the rest of the story. Link

Daniel Strohl says:

Photo by Al Hicks, New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation

A spelunker coworker of mine mentioned this yesterday and I haven't seen much mention of it in mainstream news media. Some mystery syndrome is causing several species of bats in a four-state area around Albany, NY, and Pittsfield, MA, to die off at incredible rates. We just watched a bat suffering from this white-nose syndrome as we were leaving work yesterday, in the daylight, flying very erratically and not chasing any insects for food.

"He's just burning off his fat storage and will die in an hour," my co-worker said. Apparently, by the end of this summer, every single bat from the afflicted species will be dead, which means billions of mosquitos and crop-eating insects will soon cause havoc in the area. And nobody seems to know why or how this disease/organism is spreading, nor do they know much about bat colonies in this area to be able to determine what's normal and what's abnormal for these species.

Link | More at the Hartford Courant's website

Juston Payne sent us a couple of photos reminiscent of the racist Japanese signs I posted yesterday.

The one on the left says "OUT SIDE PEOPLE CAN NOT GO UPSTAIRS." The one on the right, from the Wild Orchid Villa in Bangkok, says "NO! Thai people permitted into this guesthouse rooms."

From Yeuhd's Picasa gallery, an illustrated history of the Psi Chapter of Theta Chi Fraternity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Robert Koehring, David Flambeau, Edward Ziese, Robert B. Sullivan, and Genaro Florez were at the height of college fashion in their raccoon coats in front of the Theta Chi House, 1928-29. Link

Glyn sez, "43 civil liberties NGOs and professional associations based in 11 European countries today submitting a brief to the European Court of Justice.The amicus brief asks the Court to annul an EU directive ordering the blanket registration of telecommunications and location data of 494 million Europeans. As the document lays out, data retention violates the right to respect for private life and correspondence, freedom of expression and the right of providers to the protection of their property:"

"While it threatens to inflict great damage on society, its potential benefit appears, overall, to be little. Data retention can support the protection of individual rights only in few and generally less important cases. A permanent, negative effect on crime levels is not to be expected... [With data retention in place] citizens constantly need to fear that their communications data may at some point lead to false incrimination or governmental or private abuse of the data. Because of this, traffic data retention endangers open communication in the whole of society."

Link (Thanks, Glyn!)

Owen sez, "London's Westminster City Council has bought the copyright to the design of its street signs and intends virogously to pursue it against people selling T-shirts, keyrings and mugs that infringe upon the design."

Westminster Council’s Martin Low said, “In buying the copyright, we felt we needed to retain an element of control over the signs to maintain Westminster’s image as a world class tourist destination.”

The problem of the counterfeit signs — which are produced on everything from mugs to t-shirts to mouse mats — has ruined thousands of holidays and besmirched Westminster’s international reputation.

Tourist Mariella Bogus from Sacramento, California, said:

I paid £2.99 in good faith for a ‘Leicester Square’ fridge magnet from a street vendor, but it wasn’t until I got it home that I noticed that the font was wrong and the proportions slightly out of whack. Whatever the font’s meant to be it’s not sodding Arial and while I can’t afford a Pantone swatch book that red doesn’t look like the proper Westminster red either.

I emailed the council’s trading standards department who were very sympathetic but said that there was nothing they could do. Thank goodness that’s all changing now and people like me will get the protection we deserve from these unscrupulous hawkers. Now I feel that I can go back to London and shop safely again.

Souvenir sellers have until the end of the month to buy a licence from Westminster Council or face the full might of the law.

Link (Thanks, Owen!)

Ill. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) faced off against Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove, who objected to the state of Illinois giving $1 million to the Pilgrim Baptist Church, excoriating him for not believing in God and for having the temerity to say that the Church and State should be separate. She told him that she believed it was dangerous for children to know that atheism exists. She ordered him to stop testifying and insisted that in the Land of Lincoln, "people believe in God!"

Don't miss the audio.

Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court---

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

Link, MP3 Link to audio (Thanks, Jessica!)

In 1956 Harvey Kurtzman (wiki), creator of Mad, asked his publisher, William Gaines, for a controlling interest in the comic book. Gaines fired him. Kurtzman went to his fan, Hugh Hefner, and launched a beautifully produced humor magazine for Playboy called Trump, but Hefner spiked the project after two issues. Bruised but not beaten, he called on a number of Mad alumni (including Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Al Jaffee) to launch another humor magazine, Humbug. It ran out of money after 11 issues.

This summer, Fantagraphics is publishing the entire run of Humbug in a 2-volume slipcased set (pre-order it on Amazon for $31.50 and save 5%).

On the Fantagraphics site, production ace Paul Baresh provides a step-by-step tour of how he restored a page from Humbug.

Link

William Patry, the Google lawyer who formerly worked for the US Register of Copyrights, has a blog-post in which he outs a global anti-Fair-Use "whisper campaign" orchestrated by the big entertainment companies. The big media companies are trying to convince the world's governments that the USA's statutory exceptions to copyright (embodied in Fair Use) are so broad that they violate the centuries-old Berne Convention, a widely adopted copyright treaty. Berne is extremely rigid, and what's more, it's nearly impossible to update, since any amendments to it require signatures from all the governments that have signed it since the 1800s. Further, accession to Berne is a condition of many other trade agreements, so many countries are required to adopt Berne laws.

If the entertainment giants can convince the world's governments that Fair Use violates Berne, it might mean that the US will be forced by a trade court to eliminate it in favor of something far more restrictive.

The counter-reformation movement is presently at the stage of a whispering campaign, in which ministries in countries are told that fair use (and by extension possible liberal fair dealing provisions) violate the "three-step" test. And who wants to violate the three-step after all? The appeal by counter-reformation forces to external and abstract concepts like the three-step test is a time-worn tactic: when you can't win on the merits, shift the debate elsewhere to grounds on which you think you can win. Given that few ministry officials are experts in copyright law, much less arcana like the three-step test, these appeals -- made by those who claim to be such experts -- can be effective. They shouldn't be. National governments should make policy decisions based on the merits of the proposals, free from such scare tactics. The three-step test is not a bar to a single proposal of which I am aware.

The biggest of the three-step scare tactics is that Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act is incompatible with the test. Baloney. WIPO and European copyright experts testified before the U.S. Congress during the hearings on U.S. adherence to Berne, hearings that spanned four years: 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988: there was no lack of time or opportunity to raise any concerns. Congress even went to Geneva and convened a round table discussion there on November 25 and 26, 1987 with WIPO and European copyright experts, the sole purpose of which was to determine which parts of U.S. law needed to be amended to permit Berne adherence. Not once at this round table or during four years of hearings were the words "fair use" ever raised by a foreign expert who appeared before Congress nor did any domestic witness (of whom there were many dozens) consider there to be a potential problem. (A transcript of the round table is reproduced in the House Hearings: "Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1987, Serial No. 50, 100th Congress, 1st & 2d sessions 1135- 1213(1987, 1988)). I can say from direct experience of having been involved in these efforts at the Copyright Office that I never heard a single European expert claim there was a compatibility issue with fair use.

Link (via /.)

Dr Anne Adams was a Canadian scientist who died of a rare brain disease -- frontotemporal dementia -- which caused her to give up her lab and engage in an ecstasy of creative effort (and an agony of frustration as her mathematical ability slipped away), mostly centered on Ravel's Bolero, a composition he wrote in the throes of the same disease.

“Anne spent every day from 9 to 5 in her art studio,” said Robert Adams, a retired mathematician. Early on, she painted architectural portraits of houses in the West Vancouver, British Columbia, neighborhood where they lived.

In 1994, Dr. Adams became fascinated with the music of the composer Maurice Ravel, her husband recalled. At age 53, she painted “Unravelling Bolero” a work that translated the famous musical score into visual form.

Unbeknown to her, Ravel also suffered from a brain disease whose symptoms were identical to those observed in Dr. Adams, said Dr. Bruce Miller, a neurologist and the director of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco. Ravel composed “Bolero” in 1928, when he was 53 and began showing signs of his illness with spelling errors in musical scores and letters...

Ravel and Dr. Adams were in the early stages of a rare disease called FTD, or frontotemporal dementia, when they were working, Ravel on “Bolero” and Dr. Adams on her painting of “Bolero,” Dr. Miller said. The disease apparently altered circuits in their brains, changing the connections between the front and back parts and resulting in a torrent of creativity.

Link, Link to Adams's art, Link to more of Adams's art (Thanks, Marilyn!)

(Image: Before the Condo III, Dr Anne Adams)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel posts a link to a pictorial history of storage media -- these behemoths roamed the prehistorical jungles when a kilobyte was a kilobyte and we were damned grateful for it.

You know we love the retro tech around these parts, so it is impossible to resist Royal Pingdom's collection of now-ancient computer storage technology, like this Selectron vacuum tube that could hold up to a full 512 bytes of data when plunged directly into the exposed brain of a screaming test subject.

Link, Discuss on Boing Boing Gadgets

Richard sez, "Boy of Blue's cameras are works of art, sort of like Roger Wood's clocks, but these contraptions are more dangerous (on more than one level), incorporating actual skulls, insects and HIV+ blood." These are squicky and amazing.

4"x5" camera made from Aluminium, Copper, Titanium, Acrylic and HIV positive blood. The blood pumps through the camera then in front of the pinhole and becomes my #25 red filter. Designed to shoot a geographic comparison of people suffering from HIV.

Link (Thanks, Richard!)

Ape Lad has resurrected Ashley Holt's 1999 collaborative art project entitled Our Bullets Are Useless.

Shown here: Rommbu by Bob Kathman

Here's Ashley's description of the project from the original site: In the late 50's and early 60's, Marvel Comics (then known as Atlas) produced a series of horror and science fiction titles invariably featuring giant monster bent on destroying the human race. Whether alien invaders, dreams come to life or science gone awry, these creatures knew only hostility and vengeance, smashing anything in their path, impervious to conventional weaponry, until the little boy or nutty old man that nobody listened to figured out that the monster was allergic to a certain air freshener or some such.

These stories, appearing in such titles as Journey into Mystery and Tales to Astonish and usually drawn by Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko, have inspired at least a dozen artists...and they're all here! In 1999, I asked my fellow cartoonists to contribute to Our Bullets are Useless, a tribute book to the Atlas monsters, and herein are the results: fifteen unique renderings of gargantuan beasts terrorizing mankind.

Link

Photoshop Disasters is a blog that finds examples of image editing blunders in the media, like this one, which gives a celebrity three arms. Link