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A fashionable gentleman wearing 15 live lizards strapped to his chest was arrested by fashion police at LAX as he attempted to enter the country from Australia. US Customs agents said something about "smuggling," and claim the two geckos, eleven skinks, and two monitor lizards were worth a total of $8,500.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have (hot, natch) particle-on-particle action. If the time-traveling, LHC-hating Higgs boson particles are really out there, they don't have a whole lot of time to get together another baked goods-based offensive.
The first protons collided in the Large Hadron Collider today at CERN outside Geneva, Switzerland. These first collisions are another milestone on the way to the ultimate goal: high-energy collisions of protons in the center of the LHC experiments. They follow a weekend of rapid progress for the LHC. After more than one year of repairs, on Friday evening, November 20, beams were once again circulating in the collider. Over the weekend, the LHC team carefully studied the beams one at a time. Today at approximately 1:30 local time, two beams circulated at the same time for the first time in the LHC. As the two circulating beams passed through each other, protons from each beam hit one another, and the resulting spray of particles registered in the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb detectors.
The first two protons collided at the relatively low energies with which they were injected into the LHC, 450 GeV each. Over the next few months, LHC scientists will raise the beam energy, aiming for collisions at the world-record energy of 3.5 TeV per beam in early 2010. With these high-energy collisions, the teams on the LHC experiments will embark on their quest to solve some of the mysteries of the universe.
Symmetry magazine, First Particles Collide in the Large Hadron Collider
Previously:
- Large Hadron Collider: Now This Is Just Getting Ridiculous - Boing ...
- Sabotage on the Large Hadron Collider? - Boing Boing
- Lawsuit about risk of CERN and parallel universe - Boing Boing
- Colliding Particles: Webisodes Starring Large Hadron Collider ...
- large hadron collider probably won't destroy earth
- Large Hadron Collider hasn't sucked us into a black hole (yet ...
- big science porn: excellent new cern hadron collider qtvr
- ted 2008: brian cox of large hadron collider at cern
Good stuff out of President Obama's speech on the importance of science education. Govt. will be working with media to help kids get science literate and, more importantly, help them get that science is fun. What I'm really excited about, though, is the first annual National Lab Day (coming early May 2010!)--a nationwide, community driven event that will give kids a hands-on science experience. National Lab Day organizers are looking for scientists, engineers and science-positive folks of all professions to volunteer.
At around 19 seconds into this police car video, an alleged bank robber eats a piece of paper, which police say was a stick-up note. I think the guy is suppressing a grin.
"I screamed, but there was nothing to hear." NPR reports on the disturbing story of a man whom doctors thought was in a coma for 23 years. In reality, he was totally conscious, but couldn't communicate. Improved brain imaging technology--which made his real state apparent--was "like a second birth."
What's scariest about this animated visualization of American jobless rates? The animation doesn't include the figures released just last week, which would make the final frame even darker.
The Decline: Geography of a Recession, by Latoya Egwuekwe (American Observer, via Jason Calacanis)
Microsoft is ready to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to remove its news content from Google, according to the Financial Times. Microsoft has also approached other "big online publishers" with similar deals.
LA County detectives are investigating an assault on on a 12-year-old boy which may have been incited by a Facebook group message referencing a 2005 South Park episode. "The boy was kicked and hit in two separate incidents (...) by as many as 14 of his classmates." The attack followed a Facebook message promoting that date as Kick a Ginger Day." Sadly, not the first time for such stupidity.
Fox News spokesdouche Glenn Beck is seeking a more direct role in American politics, though it sounds mostly like a clever marketing campaign: "He will promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of conventions across the country featuring conservative speakers, all leading up to a rally in Washington in August to coincide with the release of his book on conservative proposals for the country."
Is Bruce Vilanch writing for Hugo Chavez now? 'Cause the Venezuelan leader's comedy material is pretty good lately: now he's a cannibalism apologist. In a recent speech, Chavez praised Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the late Ugandan dictator Idi "Butcher of Uganda" Amin. Said Chavez: "We thought he was a cannibal... I don't know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot." (thanks Antinous)
The Arkansas cop who used a Taser on a 10-year-old girl was punished with a 7-day paid vacation -- not for stungunning a little girl, but for not having a camera on his Taser.
Last week, Wikileaks published what were previously secret documents on a plan to create a unique ID for every single citizen in India -- that's more than a billion IDs, and would be the largest such project in world history. Now, the government agency tasked with implementing that plan is facing widespread backlash.
A group of college students were unhappy with the poor service they received, so when the bill came, they didn't pay the tip. The restaurant called the cops and the students were arrested.
"They're very colorful and big. Some of them are like 2 feet tall." A US Customs and Border agent on the shipment of bongs seized at an LA seaport, sneakily labeled as "Christmas Ornaments" by their Chinese shipper, and worth nearly $3 million.
A federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers botched maintenance of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, and that this failure was directly responsible for flood damage of homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Damage claims against the government could total billions of dollars.
This horribly conceived anti-domestic-violence web PSA from Denmark "allows you (or someone like you), in the guise of a meaty male hand, to beat the crap out of a woman. (...) to simulate the beating, you can use either your mouse or your webcam."
An upscale horseback riding club in Lithuania has been revealed as one of the CIA's "black sites," used to interrogate and torture Al-Qaeda suspects. ABC News reports that the riding academy and cafe near Vilnius was used to torture and interrogate up to eight prisoners at a time.
A source close to the British Labour Government has just given me reliable information about the most radical copyright proposal I've ever seen.
Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson -- or his successor in the next government) the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).
What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright. Mandelson elaborates on this, giving three reasons for his proposal:
1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a "three-strikes" plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)
2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to "confer rights" for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)
3. The Secretary of State would get the power to "impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement" (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright "militias" can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)
Mandelson is also gunning for sites like YouSendIt and other services that allow you to easily transfer large files back and forth privately (I use YouSendIt to send podcasts back and forth to my sound-editor during production). Like Viacom, he's hoping to force them to turn off any feature that allows users to keep their uploads private, since privacy flags can be used to keep infringing files out of sight of copyright enforcers.
This is as bad as I've ever seen, folks. It's a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.
This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.
More to follow, I'm sure, once Open Rights Group and other activist organizations get working on this. In the meantime, tell every Briton you know. If we can't stop this, it's beginning of the end for the net in Britain.
Previously:
- Brits: send a message to Mandelson and fight "three strikes ...
- Brits: sign petitition to kill proposal to disconnect accused ...
- Open Rights Group forum on proposal to cut British households off ...
- Brit business secretary promises to punish accused file-sharers ...
- UK govt proposes idiotic two-strikes-and-you're-out Internet ...
If you're sitting in an American airport this morning, wondering why you're sitting there and not on a plane that was supposed to leave an hour ago, we have an explanation for you. There seems to be a glitch in the FAA's flight plan computer system today, and it's causing delays and cancellations nationwide. If they won't open the bars yet, we think you at least deserve a conciliatory Cinnabon. (Thanks Sparky!)
Tom sends us video of a Maricopa County Sheriff's Deputy named Adam Stoddard stealing a public defender's paperwork, during a court proceeding, in front of the court's security camera. Tom adds, "The local news clip is really worth seeing, if only for the reporter's incredulous lead-in: 'The Maricopa County Sheriff's office backing one of its deputies after he takes away a lawyer's paperwork in court.' If you live in Arizona you're subject to the daily outrage from Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It's a bit like Philadelphia during the Rizzo years."
The deputy claims he wasn't stealing the paper, he was searching it for contraband. H's been found in contempt of court, and the judge has ordered him to apologize:
MCSO officer who took lawyer's paperwork might go to jail (Thanks, Tom!)Those conditions are:
1) On or before November 30th, 2009, at a time convenient for Ms. Cuccia, a news conference to take place in the plaza on the north side of the central court building where he is to give Ms. Cuccia a sincere verbal and written apology for invading her defense file and for the damage that his conduct may have caused to her professional reputation.
2) If at the news conference, Ms. Cuccia does not state that the apology is sufficient, Stoddard will report to the jail on December 1, 2009 and be detained until further order upon a finding that he has complied with the purge clause.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio responded to the ruling early Wednesday, saying Superior Court judges do not order his staff to hold press conferences.
Update: Dan Gillmor points out that the Heat City blog has done great work on this, breaking the story.
Barring any major uptick in stupid, this will be the last time I poke the 2012 believers with a stick. I swear. (At least, until January 2013.) Besides, this is a slightly different take than the usual debunking. The Santa Fe Reporter (the paper) sent Santa Fe reporter (the person) Corey Pein into the heart of the End of the World Industrial Complex to capture a slice-of-life that is by turns frustrating, fascinating, depressing and hilarious.
To be precise, there are 1,149 days until Dec. 21, 2012, when something will--nay, must--happen. It won't be the end of the world but, if it is, SFR regrets the error.
And later,
One nine-part YouTube film claims "The Illuminati Freemasons" have conspired over centuries to erect the new tower of Babel, aka the Freedom Tower, over the World Trade Center site in 2012. ("Anti-Semitism tends to float behind some of the conspiracy theories," Hoopes says.) The sublimely paranoid film also claims that since the 1970s, this cabal has "conveniently conditioned you to accept that global warming is all your fault," when actually "Your SUV's have little to do with it.. THEY.. conditioned you to become AFRAID of the SUN and CO2." Another production--by a man whose résumé boasts a few years' work long ago as a CNN field producer--makes the exact opposite argument, assailing "global warming deniers" for hiding evidence of the coming catastrophe. "In 2012, Americans will be burying their dead as their forefathers did during the Civil War--by the thousands. By the tens of thousands," the narrator says solemnly. (He goes on to pitch a "2012 Survival Guide," $34.90 plus shipping.)
My Oh Mayan! from the Santa Fe Reporter
Previously:
Welcome to Ozark, Arkansas, where police officers taser 10-year-old girls.
Jacques Vallee is a computer scientist, partner in a venture capital firm, and author of more than 20 books, including Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers, The Invisible College, and The Network Revolution.
When it was revealed that the U.S. resorted to torture to extract information from prisoners, many people my age must have had a very somber thought for the thousands of young Americans who had given their lives on the beaches of Normandy in a brave effort to rid the world of governments that engaged in such shameful practices. Two other thoughts flashed to mind: the stupidity of giving up the high moral ground at a time when the U.S. had earned so much goodwill thanks to its stand on democracy and human rights; and the pointlessness of such interrogations, often stated by our military experts, since the victims will generally admit to anything in order to stop the pain.
My friend, French Résistance leader Jacques Bergier, who was tortured multiple times by the Gestapo, made the ludicrous "confession" that his network planned to invade Corsica. In reality they were looking for heavy water and for Werner von Braun's rocket base.
As a child of World War Two who remembers its limitless horrors, my revulsion at the practices of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib was so great that it took me a while to realize the more positive implications: if our henchmen used waterboarding, a practice so primitive it placed us in the same hateful historical imagery as the caves of the Inquisition and the cellars of the Nazi, this can only mean that all the fancy interrogation drugs developed in classified labs in the 60s and 70s have failed: there is no truth serum. We should be relieved about that.
"Frat boys get abused worse during pledge week in college than that crap [at Abu Ghraib]. But it's what the media made of it. What the hell do you think they're gonna make of this?" Interrogation tapes for 3 decorated Army sergeants charged with the murder of 4 Iraqi detainees.
A gay teenager was decapitated, dismembered, and burned to death in Puerto Rico. The police investigating his murder said he deserved it because of his 'lifestyle.' (via Calpernia)
Comparing actual, recorded H1N1 deaths to estimated annual seasonal flu deaths is like comparing "the number of flu deaths with the number of Subarus sold in Canada." (You gotta love mathematicians who give good quote.) The Canadian Press explains where the annual flu death estimates come from and why we probably won't really know how bad H1N1 was until 2011. Pro tip: CP Reporter Helen Branswell is one of the best medical journalists out there. If you want to understand what's going on with the Hiney Virus, read her work.
As blogged previously, the Obama administration is blocking release of photos documenting torture in Iraq and Afghanistan by US forces - ironically, just as Obama speaks against censorship in China. The CPB says, "We think someone with access to the photos should simply leak them on the web, saving tax payers a load of cash and letting people know just what it is our twin occupations are really about."
The author of long-running "secret diary of a call girl" blog Belle de Jour outs herself. Dr. Brooke Magnanti is a science blogger--and respected health researcher. And she really was a sex worker, for about a year and a half, while finishing her Ph.D. Takeaway lesson: Graduate school is expensive, yo. Takeaway debate: Is this good or bad for female scientists/science bloggers? It shouldn't matter at all. But does it?
SAME WE CAN BELIEVE IN: The Obama administration has granted Defense Secty. Robert Gates new powers to block the release of 21 color photos showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans. The ACLU sued for release of the images. Federal courts previously rejected attempts to keep them secret. ACLU: "No democracy has ever been made stronger by suppressing information about its own misconduct."
During the health care debate in congress, more than a dozen US lawmakers all parrotted talking points scripted for them by lobbyists working for biotech/drug giant Genentech. So what? Said one of those lobbyists, "This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it."
Momma Tried: Colton Harris-Moore has a posse. And t-shirts. (previous post / thanks Jason Weisberger)
"He is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln's major significance for that movement. Thus, on [Tibet] we hope that President Obama, more than any other foreign leader, can better, more deeply grasp China's stance on protecting national sovereignty and territorial integrity." ● Obama arrives in Shanghai tomorrow. China is pre-emptively detaining dissidents (via Instapundit). ● Related: Obama snubbed the Dalai Lama in DC this week (and that's a first, Bush and Clinton met with him every time).
Clay Shirky asks, "Is there a worse media reporter in America than Howard Kurtz?" American Progress article.
TechCrunch agrees with Cory's (and Jason Calacanis') predictions from last week: Murdoch is about to sign an exclusivity deal with an also-ran search engine. (There was more at the Graun.) Mike Arrington, however, suggests this will succeed in hurting Google.
Two stories on "fast news," and how the rush to press in the Fort Hood story may have led to major inaccuracies. ProPublica: "Remember the hero female cop who shot Hasan? Well, maybe she did and maybe she didn't." And, NYT: "Another officer, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, 42, said (...) he fired the shots that brought down the gunman after Sergeant Munley was seriously wounded."
Guestblogger Arthur Goldwag is the author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" and other books.
Today's is my last guest post here. I want to take this opportunity to thank Pesco and Boing Boing for inviting me here and giving me the latitude to say whatever I wanted to about whatever crossed my mind. I'm especially grateful to everyone who took the time to comment on my posts, whether you agreed with them or not. You're an amazingly thoughtful, opinionated, funny, articulate, out-of-the-box bunch, and for the most part admirably civil. The reservoir of wit, knowledge and intellectual firepower that Boing Boing has on tap is truly astonishing. As I'm sure I've said before, I don't write because I know so much--I write because it gives me an opportunity to learn. And you've all taught me a great deal. I hope I can come back and contribute to Boing Boing again; in the meantime, you're all welcome to drop by my own blog any time.
Today's is my last guest post here. I want to take this opportunity to thank Pesco and Boing Boing for inviting me here and giving me the latitude to say whatever I wanted to about whatever crossed my mind. I'm especially grateful to everyone who took the time to comment on my posts, whether you agreed with them or not. You're an amazingly thoughtful, opinionated, funny, articulate, out-of-the-box bunch, and for the most part admirably civil. The reservoir of wit, knowledge and intellectual firepower that Boing Boing has on tap is truly astonishing. As I'm sure I've said before, I don't write because I know so much--I write because it gives me an opportunity to learn. And you've all taught me a great deal. I hope I can come back and contribute to Boing Boing again; in the meantime, you're all welcome to drop by my own blog any time.
I began last Monday with my lucubrations about Orly Taitz and the birther movement. For the sake of symmetry, I will close out with some remarks about another woman of the right, Alaska's ex-governor Sarah Palin.
My husband called me last night all a-twitter and once I got him talking slow enough to understand that he wasn't going on about "six pennies", I could sympathize with the high level of enthusiasm. Earlier this year, "Sixth Sense Technology" from MIT---basically, a visual interface system that allows you and the computer in your cell phone to communicate in some truly astounding ways---was a big hit at TED. This week, at TED India, inventor Pranav Mistry announced that the technology will be released as open source...in a matter of months.
"Rather than waiting for that time to come, I want people to make their own system. Why not?," Mistry says in an article on Rediff Business. "People will be able to make their own hardware. I will give them instructions how to make it. And also provide them key software...give them basic key software layers...they will be able to build their own applications. They will be able to modify base level and do anything".
Makers, start your engines.
Mistry to make digital "Sixth Sense" open source on Rediff Business
The importance of Sixth Sense going open source on zdnet
Sixth Sense augmented reality device goes open source on Singularity Hub (natch)
Guardian: "The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying."
A strapped-for-cash middle school in North Carolina is selling test points to students for $20.
Michael Jackson's funeral cost one million dollars. His final outfit cost $35,000, and the flowers cost $16,000. Lord. Obviously I'm no MJ anyhow, but when I die, if there's a mil lying around? Feel free to bury me in nekkid dirt and use the rest to feed pie to starving kids.
Mil-tech reporter Noah Shachtman: "First, he said he found Saddam's WMD bunkers. Then, he claimed the U.S. military was zapping animals to death with real-life ray guns. Now (...) former Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent Dave Gaubatz is calling for a 'professional and legal backlash against the Muslim community and their leaders,' following the Ft. Hood massacre."
Lisa Nowak, the troubled ex-astronaut whose romantic revenge plot involved diapers, pepper spray, and a car trunk full of kidnapping supplies, today pleaded guilty to felony car burglary and misdemeanor battery.
Today, the Los Angeles city council appointed Gemini 12 and Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin as its "Honorary Consul General to the Moon."
A woman who appears to have been inebriated fell onto the tracks in a Boston subway as a train was rushing towards her. People on the platform frantically waved at the train, which stopped in the nick of time.
John Allan Muhammad, best known for killing 10 people in the 2002 DC-area sniper shootings, will be executed at 9PM today in Virginia.
Guestblogger Arthur Goldwag is the author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" and other books.
(CC-licensed photo on Flickr by 911conspiracy)
Forty-five years ago, Harpers magazine published Richard Hofstadter's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." The occasion for the piece was the revenant conservatism that had driven Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign (the magazine hit the newsstands the month of the Johnson/Goldwater election), but it remains astonishingly apt. I cannot recommend it enough for anyone who wants to understand the mentalités of fringe political movements in the United States--from the Anti-Masons and Know Nothings in the first half of the 1800s, to McCarthyism, the Nation of Islam, and the Weathermen in the last century, to the Birthers and Truthers today.
Fake Steve Jobs points to the NYT's kid-gloves piece on Zynga, published the same week as bloggers exposed Zynga's scummy doings, as reason number one for Big Print's Decline: "The truth is, if newspapers want to survive they should go back to doing what they started out doing -- muckraking, stirring the shit, calling bullshit."
"The person-to-person donor-to-borrower connections created by Kiva are partly fictional. I suspect that most Kiva users do not realize this." The storm unleashed by a blog post exploring a model in which loans go to microfinance institutions, not necessarily the specific Mr. goat herder or Ms. cassava farmer upon whose face you click. (NYT)
"Malcolm X was bisexual. Get over it." A most provocative headline from the Guardian during Black History Month in the UK. About the writer, one BB commenter responds, "The thought of actually having a black LGBT person talk about black LGBT issues never crossed the Guardian's mind?"
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