Amy Wallace's Wired feature, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All" looks at the life and times of Paul Offit, vaccine inventor and advocate, and the anti-vaccine pseudo-science he battles as he attempts to convince parents not to give in to fear and disinformation, and to follow the science that will keep their kids safe.

At this year's Autism One conference in Chicago, I flashed more than once on Carl Sagan's idea of the power of an "unsatisfied medical need." Because a massive research effort has yet to reveal the precise causes of autism, pseudo-science has stepped aggressively into the void. In the hallways of the Westin O'Hare hotel, helpful salespeople strove to catch my eye as I walked past a long line of booths pitching everything from vitamins and supplements to gluten-free cookies (some believe a gluten-free diet alleviates the symptoms of autism), hyperbaric chambers, and neuro-feedback machines.

To a one, the speakers told parents not to despair. Vitamin D would help, said one doctor and supplement salesman who projected the equation "No vaccines + more vitamin d = no autism" onto a huge screen during his presentation. (If only it were that simple.) Others talked of the powers of enzymes, enemas, infrared saunas, glutathione drips, chelation therapy (the controversial -- and risky -- administration of certain chemicals that leech metals from the body), and Lupron (a medicine that shuts down testosterone synthesis).

Offit calls this stuff, much of which is unproven, ineffectual, or downright dangerous, "a cottage industry of false hope." He didn't attend the Autism One conference, though his name was frequently invoked. A California woman with an 11-year-old autistic son told me, aghast, that she'd personally heard Offit say you could safely give a child 10,000 vaccines (in fact, the number he came up with was 100,000 -- more on that later). A mom from Arizona, who introduced me to her 10-year-old "recovered" autistic son -- a bright, blue-eyed, towheaded boy who hit his head on walls, she said, before he started getting B-12 injections -- told me that she'd read Offit had made $50 million from the RotaTeq vaccine. In her view, he was in the pocket of Big Pharma.

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

Lenore "Free Range Kids" Skenazy has a stirring editorial in defense of Hallowe'en and kids in today's Huffpo:

It's not that I'm cavalier about safety. I'm just a sucker -- so to speak -- for the facts. And the fact is: No child has been poisoned by a stranger's goodies on Halloween, ever, as far as we can determine. Joel Best, a sociology professor at the University of Delaware, studied November newspapers from 1958 to the present, scouring them for any accounts of kids felled by felonious candy. And...he didn't find any. He did find one account of a boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix his father gave him. Dad did it for the insurance money and, Best says, he probably figured that so many kids are poisoned on Halloween, no one would notice one more...

It's not just the fact that churches and community centers are throwing parties so that kids don't go out on their own. It's not just the fact that Bobtown, Pennsylvania has gone so far as to "cancel" Halloween altogether -- for the sake of "safety." (The authorities there were surprised to find this decision unpopular.) It's not even that those of us who'd like to hand out homemade cookies know they'll be instantly tossed in the trash.

No, the truly spooky thing is that Halloween has become a riot of warnings that are way scarier than the holiday itself. The website Halloween-Safety.com recommends that if your child is carrying a fake butcher knife, make sure the tip is "smooth and flexible enough to not cause injury if fallen upon."

As Goes Halloween, So Goes Childhood

Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level has a great item up about the growing menace of "money mules." The term refers to bank customers who've been conned into unwittingly laundering cash that hackers have stolen from business bank accounts. The con and the funny phrase have been around for a while, but the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation issued a new warning to American financial institutions about the increasing spread on Thursday. Snip:

Using specialized Trojan horse malware, cybercrooks have been intercepting web-banking credentials from the computers of small and midsize businesses, and then initiating wire transfers to mules around the country. The mules are consumers who’ve been lured into fake work-at-home scams, in which their employment involves receiving money transfers and then forwarding the funds to Eastern Europe, either directly or through other mules.

The scheme has exploded in the last year, with the FBI estimating losses at $40 million so far, according to a recent story from WashingtonPost.com reporter Brian Krebs, who’s been closely following the attacks.

FDIC Warns Banks to Watch for 'Money Mules' Duped by Hackers [ Threat Level via @glennf ]

[ Image: Bank Safe Online UK ]

Deirdre Walker, a 24-year police veteran who retired after serving as the Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police writes up a recent interaction with the TSA in the Albany airport, subjecting it to critical policing analysis and finding it sorely, sorely wanting. This is a very good critical piece on conducting good security and curbing excess, and if there were any justice in this world, this woman would be put in charge of the TSA tomorrow.

Finally, I am most concerned about the "random" nature of my repeated selection for secondary screening. If there is no discrimination at work, and my selection is entirely random, then we have yet another, and probably more significant problem.

For years in policing, we relied on random patrols to curb crime. We relied upon this "strategy" until someone went out and captured some data, and did a study that demonstrated conclusively that random patrols do not work (Kansas City Study).

As police have employed other types of "random" interventions, as in DWI checkpoints, they have had to develop policies, procedures and training to ensure that the "random" nature of these intrusions is truly random. Whether every car gets checked, or every tenth car, police must demonstrate that they have attempted to eliminate the effects of active and passive discrimination when using "random" strategies. No such accountability currently exists at TSA.

* "Do I have the right to refuse this search?"

Laughing Squid has photos of the "Candy Corn Cones" that street artist diabetik is plopping around in Washington, DC.

Recreation of Louis Slotin's deadly hands-on experiment. Public domain government image, taken from Wikipedia.

They might know the name, but nobody ever says, "I want to be like Louis Slotin when I grow up." And with good reason. Despite being fiercely intelligent, quick thinking and brave, Slotin is famous for something that nobody really wants to be famous for---namely, dying horribly. In May 1946, Slotin, a researcher on the Manhattan Project, became the second person in history to be killed by a criticality accident, the unintentional triggering of a nuclear chain reaction.

Slotin's story made it to Hollywood, fictionalized in the movie "Fat Man and Little Boy". Not everyone got such a public legacy. As the cold war neared an end in the 1980s, scientists in the USSR began to share information with their American counterparts, and, for the first time, we learned about the Soviet Slotins. Now, their legacy will shape the way emergency personnel respond to nuclear accidents and terrorism and, hopefully, make it easier to save lives...

Update: Confirmed, the couple were captured. Their boat is believed to have been spotted.

A British couple in their mid-fifties who pretty much live their lives sailing around the world on their boat, "The Lynn Rival," are feared to have been captured by Somali pirates. Above, a screengrab from the blog Paul and Rachel Chandler maintained throughout their travels (blog.mailasail.com/lynnrival). The "thumbtack" icon shows the last spot they registered online before disappearing a few days ago while traveling waters off the coast of East Africa.

More on their story in the New York Times, and the UK Times.

Two pilots on a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Minneapolis, MN flew past the airport in error last week, and federal investigators now report that this was caused by laptop distraction in the cockpit. Northwest has just gone through a merger, and the pilots were apparently kvetching to one another about the confusing new scheduling system imposed post-merger.

"Each pilot accessed and used his personal laptop computer while they discussed the airline crew flight scheduling procedure," the NTSB report said. More from the New York Times.

The pilots told the National Transportation Safety Board that they missed their destination because they had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer, Richard I. Cole, could tutor the captain, Timothy B. Cheney, in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall.

Troy had heard the reputation that the 555 California Building's security guards had for hassling photographers, so he tried out the experiment of photographing (legally) the building, and was met by potty-mouth security guards who threatened to break his "fucking camera" and punch him in the face. A rep from property managers Voranado Realty later apologized and said that this wasn't "typical of our security team."

No photography, they stated clearly. Why, we responded. Safety, they said.

I decided to challenge this statement and the older of the bunch (left) asked me if I wanted to be punched in the face. No, I replied, I have to go back to work and a black eye would make things awkward for me. He then asked me how I would feel if he broke my camera. I told him I would be bummed, but that I needed an upgrade and if he touched me or my camera I would seek monetary legal action to the extent of a brand new Canon 5D Mark II.

Shortly after, my internal voice of reason set in and I decided to leave. The conversation was going no where and a definition of "safety" was unable to be produced.

One of the security guards did give me a phone number to call for more information, which I called this morning. Strangely, the number has nothing to do with BofA or 555 California, but in fact belongs to a woman in Chinatown who had no idea what I was talking about.

If you're in San Francisco and want to go by 555 this weekend to get a photo, do drop by the comments on this post to let us know whether this is "typical" or not.

"I Will Break Your Fucking Camera"

Security expert Ben "OpenSSL" Laurie went into a Barclay's bank to transfer a large sum of money ("enough money to fund a small country") and discovered an incredibly lax, brittle security system that focused on meeting compliance requirements instead of keeping deposits safe. I'm in the process of switching from Barclay's to the Co-Op, after years of frustration, insane fees, and terrible service. The Co-Op has its own security issues (they won't let you use random passwords, instead forcing you to use much-more-easily hacked passwords that contain no repeated characters) but they're nowhere near as bad as Barclay's.

When I got there we sat down with a bank employee who asked me for my cash card. He stuck it into a PINsentry and asked me to type my PIN. On that evidence alone, we proceeded to transfer enough money to fund a small country. I find this a little scary. Anyway, when I reviewed the documentation, which I had to sign, it had a little box about ID verification, into which he'd typed "PIN xxxx + SRS" - "xxxx" was (part of?) the code from the PINsentry. I asked him what "SRS" meant and he explained it meant he'd checked my signature. In fact, he hadn't, but he proceeded to do so at that point, commenting that he already knew what my signature looked like, presumably to explain away why he hadn't done the check before...

Anyway, at this point my wife mentioned that we were rather expecting them to check ID and stuff, to which he responded in a way I feel sure was not authorised by the bank: "well, we used to be more secure but now the bank believes that PINs are the highest level of verification". I explained to him why I disagreed with the bank. He didn't argue with me.

Oh yes, the signature check? He wasn't even in the room when I signed. For all he knew I carefully copied it from a crib sheet. So, all that's standing between me and complete emptying of my bank account is my PIN. But hey, the only way anyone other than me could know that is if I told them, isn't it? So it would serve me right, obviously.

"We Used To Be More Secure"

I was about to say that I'm just one of those people who understands things more fully once I see them in visual form, but I think that, when it comes to statistics, "one of those people" really just means "most of us".

Case in point, this great visualization of the facts about HPV vaccine safety and cervical cancer risk put together by the Information is Beautiful blog. For me, this really bridged the gap between knowing the facts and intuitively understanding them. Follow the link to check it out.

Noted teledouchebag Chris Hanson interrogates unrepentant pedocreep Roman Polanski in this long-lost episode of To Catch a Predator. (Remixed by TNOYF.com, via instapundit)

Photographer Anthony Citrano roamed the burning hills above Los Angeles as the recent Station Fire spread. He captured a few photos of the spot where later, authorities would say the fire began. So why aren't law enforcement agencies or fire investigators returning his calls? Read his blog post, with photos, here. And in the LA Times, related reading: "Three weeks ahead of the Station blaze, the Forest Service sought to limit the use of local firefighting resources." Say it loud, people: no public option for firefighting!

American megacorp Cargill, which brought in $116.6 billion in revenue last year, is in the spotlight this week around the story of Stephanie Smith: the 22 year old children's dance instructor was paralyzed from the waist down after eating E. coli-tainted hamburger traced back to the meat supplier.

She was in a coma for nine weeks (that's her, hospitalized, in the photo below), and can now no longer walk. "Ground beef is not a completely safe product," one food safety expert in the article is quoted. Well, no shit. Snip from an extensive investigative report in Sunday's New York Times:

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled "American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties." Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Using a combination of sources -- a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger -- allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testing only after the ingredients are ground together.

E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection (New York Times)

The British Home Office is looking for proposals to make it harder to attack people with pint-glasses, including a mandate that all pint sleeves be made from plastic, or coated with shatter-resistant plastic. Because, you know, most bar-brawlers are fundamentally upset at the pint, not the people around them, and if they can't smash a pint sleeve, they will contain their anger and not use a chair, bottle, or imposing scarred forehead.

Not surprisingly, the British Beer and Pub Association is not in favor of the plan and does not want the new glasses to be mandatory. "For the drinker," said a BBPA representative, "the pint glass feels better, it has a nice weight and the drink coats the glass nicely. . . . Is it necessary to replace the much-loved pint glass for safety reasons in the vast majority of pubs where there is no problem?" Yes, said the Home Office Minister. "Innovative design has played an important role in driving down overall crime," he claimed, though it wasn't clear what innovative design he was referring to, maybe the knives. "This project will see those same skills applied to the dangerous and costly issue of alcohol-related crime and I am confident that it will lead to similar successes."

British Government Considers Mandating Plastic Pint Glasses

Uh-oh. Now that a terrorist has tried unsuccessfully to blow up a Saudi prince with a bomb shoved up his ass, the TSA is obliged to perform rectal exams on every flier for the rest of time. After all, once a jihadi failed to blow up a plane with his shoe, we all needed to start taking our shoes off. Then some knuckleheads believed they could blow up a plane with energy beverages and hair gel, so now we have to limit ourselves to 100ml of all liquids and gels, unless they're for babies or are prescription (because no mass-murderer would be so evil as to forge a doctor's note, which, as every junkie knows, cannot possibly be forged).

Now we found someone who was made to believe he could kill people with an asshole bomb, and so it follows that the TSA will have to ban -- or at least inspect -- our assholes. They're like opinions, you know, everybody's got one. Except, of course, most of us got to keep our assholes to ourselves. Not anymore.

Let's just be thankful that no one has yet convinced a suicidal murderer that he could blow up a plane with his mind, because once that happens, we're all in for mandatory airport trepannations. Because, you know, you can't be too safe. Every little bit helps. If an unhinged suicide bomber believes it's possible, we must take it seriously. To do less would be irresponsible.

For years, I have made the joke about Richard Reid: "Just be glad that he wasn't the underwear bomber." Now, sadly, we have an example of one.

Lewis Page, an "improvised-device disposal operator tasked in support of the UK mainland police from 2001-2004," pointed out that this isn't much of a threat for three reasons: 1) you can't stuff a lot of explosives into a body cavity, 2) detonation is, um, problematic, and 3) the human body can stifle an explosion pretty effectively (think of someone throwing himself on a grenade to save his friends).

But who ever accused the TSA of being rational?

Ass Bomber

I don't know anything about this PSA advising young people to stay away from chat rooms lest the cute boy on the other end turn out to be Cthulhu, waiting to take their sanity, but I certainly support its message.

Cthulhu PSA

Sneakey is a project from Benjamin Laxton, Kai Wang, and Stefan Savage at the UCSD vision lab that has shown that it is possible to duplicate keys from photos taken at a distance and/or an angle. They've published a paper and are offering to release their code if there is "sufficient interest."

The access control provided by a physical lock is based on the assumption that the information content of the corresponding key is private --- that duplication should require either possession of the key or a priori knowledge of how it was cut. However, the ever-increasing capabilities and prevalence of digital imaging technologies present a fundamental challenge to this privacy assumption. Using modest imaging equipment and standard computer vision algorithms, we demonstrate the effectiveness of physical key teleduplication --- extracting a key's complete and precise bitting code at a distance via optical decoding and then cutting precise duplicates. We describe our prototype system, Sneakey, and evaluate its effectiveness, in both laboratory and real-world settings, using the most popular residential key types in the U.S.

Sneakey (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

I'm seeing a number of tweets from participants and organizers of the recent PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) which indicate at least one case of swine flu has been confirmed, and more feared.

PAX is a three-day game fest for tabletop, videogame, and PC gamers, and took place September 4-6 in Seattle. Perhaps folks more familiar with the details than I can update us in the comments here. Organizers are using the hashtag #paxflu to track updates on Twitter. Of course, this could also be a very crafty viral marketing campaign. Seriously, though: to those who contracted it or are at risk, get health care pronto, and get well soon. (via @willsmith)

Remember the BB blog post last week about one of our commenters spotting Garrido's creepy molester van following the Google vehicle in Google Street View? NBC's Today Show stopped by the Boing Boing Video studios yesterday and included a brief show-and-tell about this internet moment in a segment about what we can learn from the Garrido case, which ran earlier this morning. Yeah, it's his van alright.

Related Boing Boing Posts:
* The blog of Philip Garrido, serial rapist and kidnapper: "sound control" gadget hallucinations.
* Did Google Street View spot rapist/kidnapper Garrido?

Over at Wired's Danger Room blog, news that an environmental nonprofit has obtained photos of the Department of Energy's "specially designed trucks" used to transport nuclear material around the United States. They pretty much look like any other transport truck, which is a little creepy, considering what they contain while they're rollin' down the highway. Just this week, a similar vehicle carrying missiles overturned -- so, safety concerns are in the air right now. Snip:

"The trucks carrying nuclear weapons and dangerous materials such as plutonium pass through cities and neighborhoods all the time and the public should be aware of what they look like," says Tom Clements of the Friends of the Earth group based in Columbia, South Carolina, which obtained the photos through a Freedom of Information Act request. "Release of these photos will help inform the public about secretive shipments of dangerous nuclear material that are taking place in plain view."

Here's the original news on the Friends of the Earth website.

Good food for thought in this op-ed by Adam Cohen, which picks up on the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (disclosure: a group we're all big supporters of here at Boing Boing):

A little-appreciated downside of the technology revolution is that, mainly without thinking about it, we have given up "locational privacy." Even in low-tech days, our movements were not entirely private. The desk attendant at my gym might have recalled seeing me, or my colleagues might have remembered when I arrived. Now the information is collected automatically and often stored indefinitely.

Privacy advocates are rightly concerned. Corporations and the government can keep track of what political meetings people attend, what bars and clubs they go to, whose homes they visit. It is the fact that people's locations are being recorded "pervasively, silently, and cheaply that we're worried about," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a recent report.

People's cellphones and E-ZPasses are increasingly being used against them in court. If your phone is on, even if you are not on a call, you may be able to be found (and perhaps picked up) at any hour of the day or night. As disturbing as it is to have your private data breached, it is worse to think that your physical location might fall into the hands of people who mean you harm.

A Casualty of the Technology Revolution: 'Locational Privacy' (New York Times via Mitch Kapor)

Video link (MSNBC), and YouTube link (for folks in places where the official source is region-blocked.)

This, my friends, is why we have television. Man, but Rachel Maddow kicks all kinds of ass. Here, she interviews former US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on revelations that the "Terror Threat Level" system was manipulated for political purposes during the Bush Administration.

As Jay Rosen aptly tweeted just now, "There are times when TV truly is an x-ray. Dissembling made visible. (...) To work himself out of the bind she had gotten him into, Ridge actually disavowed the jacket copy of his own book under Maddow's questioning."

Background: Ridge Claims That He Was Pressured to Elevate Threat Warning (Washington Post)

NASA image of the Los Angeles fires, as viewed from high above our planet.

The image was acquired mid-morning on Sunday -- the fire has since more than doubled in size, mind you! -- by the "backward (northward)-viewing camera of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite."

To give you a sense of scale, the image you see here covers an area 152 miles wide. Them's some big blazes.

More about the image here, and larger sizes. And here's more, from scientists at NASA JPL. Robert Mackey at the NYT has a related item. I cringe at linking to the Daily Mail, but hold your nose and click on this image: an annotated version of this same NASA shot that shows you where various parts of LA are located. I am happy to report that I am safely near the edge of the blue stuff, and not downwind of those huge, nasty smoke plumes.

A followup on this earlier BB post about the wacko blog and gadget hallucinations of kidnapper/rapist (now also a murder suspect) Phillip Garrido.

Weighing in on that post, an astute BB commenter noticed that if you do a Google Maps search for 1554 Walnut Avenue, Antioch, CA -- the address of the Antioch home where Garrido detained Jaycee Dugard (and her children, fathered by rape) -- you can see an overhead view of all the tents, tarps and sheds that Garrido's parole officer(s) and local police were too incompetent to bother checking, despite the fact that the guy was a convicted rapist. The overhead view in Google Maps has since been widely reported and blogged, so that's old news 4 days later.

But not this. Check out what another commenter noticed. When you're at that address in Google Maps, switch over to Street View mode. You'll see something chilling. Right in the 1554 Walnut Avenue driveway, you see a beat-up van with a rusty, trashed exterior, and what looks like a man behind the steering wheel. Follow the van.

Video: Time Lapse Test: Station Fire, a haunting little piece put together by Eric Speigelman.

The "Station Fire" has now spread to nearly 100,000 acres. Fires are a predictable, seasonal, and natural aspect of ecology and life in Southern California. The Onion nailed it here.

I know we say this every year, but the ones blazing out there as I type are particularly large and powerful. All weekend, it really did look (and smell) like a giant atomic bomb had gone off. The air throughout LA county was unsafe to breathe. Two firefighters died yesterday, while battling the blazes. I live and work in LA, nowhere near the flames and not at risk. All best wishes go out to BB friends who are in the danger zone. Be safe.

Below: Anthony Citrano's photo coverage of the Station Fire. There are several fires active right now, but this is the big one threatening Pasadena/Altadena/etc., including the NASA JPL facility. JPL's statement about the fire emergency is here, looks like they're pretty safe now. Citrano's Flickr set is here, with a number of truly stunning and scary shots (CC).

After the jump: WHOAH, BB reader Danimation shot another *incredible* time-lapse of the giant smoke clouds, you really have to see this one. Click ahead to view. Feel free to post other resources of interest in the comments.

Well, this little viral number didn't take long to become the stuff of screaming Drudge sirens. So, over at CNET, Declan McCullagh wrote about an update to a cybersecurity bill that first circulated this spring. In his interpretation of the bill (which I haven't read in entirety, full disclosure), Declan says the bill gives the White House new power to unplug private-sector computers from the Internet in the case of national emergency. Snip:

[Critics of the earlier bill are] not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet (CNET).

Commenting on this article, ZDNET's Sam Diaz argues that the White House is not equipped to hold the keys (where are these magical keys, btw?). "The argument that the government is ill-equipped and shouldn't be trusted with the such far-reaching power is no joke."

At the Atlantic, Mark Armbinder counters that Skepticism [is] Warranted -- But Nuance Needed.

A few things to keep in mind. One: the president already has the authority to shut down parts of the Internet in emergencies.

In 1991, after having been paroled, convicted kidnapper and rapist Phillip Garrido snatched an 11 year old girl named Jaycee Dugard off the street. He kept her captive for 18 years, repeatedly raped her, and fathered two children from those rapes. Jaycee gave birth to the first child when she was 14. There may be additional child victims. And investigators are now also looking for clues that could link Garrido with a series of 10 unsolved murders nearby, in which prostitutes were sexually violated before they were killed.

Garrido maintained a blogspot blog which amounts to a disturbing look inside the internal thought process of a monster. That blog includes numerous postings about an electronic invention he wished to patent, that allowed him to "control sound" using his "mental powers." Snip:

This document is to affirm that I Phillip Garrido have clearly demonstrated the ability to control sound with my mind and have developed a device for others to witness this phenomena. by using a sound generator to provide the sound, and a headphone amplification system, ( a device to focuc your hearing so as to increase the sensitivity of what one is listening to) I have produced a set of voices by effectively controlling the sound to pronounce words through my own mental powers.

His brother told the press today that Garrido did a lot of LSD when younger. Phillip Garrido believes that having children with the child he abducted and raped cured him of pedophilia. Blogging under the user name THEMANWHOSPOKEWITHHISMIND, Garrido wrote,

This all began by God removing a problem from my shoulders that behavioral scientist believe is not possible to remove. since then my life has seen major improvements allowing me to stand here today a free man.

His crazy hallucinations about controlling sound and controlling human thought and will are not at all unrelated to his crimes. Garrido housed his victims in a series of makeshift tents and soundproofed shelters in his back yard, in such a way that neighbors, according to several reports, "never heard a thing."

Despite Garrido's careful schemes to "control sound" and control the behavior and visibility of his captives, at least one neighbor did suspect something, and contacted authorities. The police came to Garrido's property, and didn't go in the back yard to check.

The deputy determined that no crime had been committed even though he did not enter or ask to enter the backyard, the sheriff said.

I wonder how many other opportunities were missed before an unnamed female campus security officer at UC Berkeley started the chain of events that would lead to Dugard's freedom, and that of her two children. Update: The officer's name is Ally Jacobs.

Here's the Megan's Law database entry for Phillip Garrido. (Tip: want to totally creep yourself out, and/or protect your family? Search the database for entries located near your home or place of work).

Yesterday, he gave a lengthy, rambling phone interview with a local TV station. You can listen to the whole interview with Garrido here. It is chilling. Snip from transcript:

"It's a disgusting thing that took place with me in the beginning. But I turned my life completely around (...) What's kept me busy the last several years is I've completely turned my life around. And you're going to find the most powerful story coming from the witness, the victim - you wait.

If you take this a step at a time, you're going to fall over backwards and in the end, you're going to find the most powerful heart-warming story."

May he rot in hell.

BB commenter Mojave adds,

An interesting little side note to this story is that [his] van was captured on googlestreetview as it left the house of horrors. I think even calling the guy a monster is too nice. Gives monsters a bad name.

And other BB commenters note that related images taken by the Google Street View van on that same day seem to show that Garrido's van may have followed the Google van with interest.

"No fish can escape mercury pollution" is the bottom line in a federal study of mercury contamination that tested fish from nearly 300 streams across the United States. Link to AP article.

Over at Dangerous Minds, Richard Metzger says, "I like how the AP writer tries valiantly to put a positive spin on this. It may well be that 100% of all fish in America has some level of mercury contamination, but only one fish in four has dangerously high levels. Dude, we are so screwed..."

Image: "Don't eat an entire fish at once," from mrjoro's CC-licensed Flickr stream.

A report published in the August edition of the European Respiratory Society Journal points to a link between exposure to nanoparticles and severe illnesses suffered by seven factory workers in China who worked with them. One of the workers died. "These cases arouse concern that long-term exposure to some nanoparticles without protective measures may be related to serious damage to human lungs."

Exposure to nanoparticles is related to pleural effusion, pulmonary fibrosis and granuloma (ERS Journal, via Maggie Koerth-Baker)

Related: Deaths, lung damage linked to nanoparticles in China (Reuters)

Well this is bad news. I had a hunch the stuff was evil, even though I've been slathering it on like skin cream when I travel to malaria-infested places. Some 200 million people a year use the stuff, and apparently it's bad news for the brain and nervous system, particularly when combined with other repellents that have similar toxic effects. Snip from a Science Daily article:

The active ingredient in many insect repellents, deet, has been found to be toxic to the central nervous system. Researchers say that more investigations are urgently needed to confirm or dismiss any potential neurotoxicity to humans, especially when deet-based repellents are used in combination with other neurotoxic insecticides.

Vincent Corbel from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Montpellier, and Bruno Lapied from the University of Angers, France, led a team of researchers who investigated the mode of action and toxicity of deet (N,N-Diethyl-3-methylbenzamide). Corbel said, "We've found that deet is not simply a behavior-modifying chemical but also inhibits the activity of a key central nervous system enzyme, acetycholinesterase, in both insects and mammals".

Popular Insect Repellent Deet Is Neurotoxic

Here's the source report: Deet inhibits cholinesterase: Evidence for inhibition of cholinesterases in insect and mammalian nervous systems by the insect repellent deet (BioMed Central)

The New York Times today published a previously unreleased body of research conducted by the Department of Transportation in 2003 on the safety effects of using cellphones and other wireless communications devices while driving.

The New York Times obtained the research from the Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen, two consumer advocacy groups that earlier this year acquired more than 250 pages of undisclosed material through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Here is the takeaway: talking on a mobile, or worse yet, inputting text or fiddling around with an app -- all are forms of distraction while driving. The less distracted you are while driving, the safer you and everyone else on the road with you will be. Duh.

Documents: Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Related article: DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION: U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving (Matt Richtel, NYT)

Previously on Boing Boing:
Radley Balko on NY Times photo: " I can't really conceive of a scenario where it wasn't staged."

Someone who goes by the name of "Hacker Croll" breached the cloud computing accounts of one or more Twitter employees, and obtained access to extremely sensitive personal and corporate documents. I won't link to the documents, but they're floating around. I first read about the breach on the New York Times "Bits" blog.

This seems as good a time as any to remind everyone about choosing and managing passwords wisely. The New York Times' Gadgetwise blog has a helpful post up today along those lines. Snip:

The lesson Twitter employees are learning the hard way is a lesson for us all. If you use cloud services for personal or work purposes, you need to:

* Use strong passwords
* Use a different password for each of your accounts
* Pick tough security questions
* Keep your passwords and answers to security questions to yourself.

If you use Gmail, here are tips on how to keep your account secure. There are also instructions on securely retrieving a forgotten password with a text message to your phone.)

If you find it difficult to remember multiple strong passwords, choose a secure way to store them.

Twitter Gets Hacked. Can It Happen to You? (NYT Gadgetwise)

Related: Much debate online today about the ethics involved in publishing the ill-gotten docs. Here is a blog post at Information Week arguing that this reflects recklessness, and here are two blog posts which defend the notion that this is a protected right (my linking these should not be interpreted as a personal blessing, I'm thinking all of it through, too): copyrightsandcampaigns, and citmedialaw.org.

Here is Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's blog post about the data theft:

About a month ago, an administrative employee here at Twitter was targeted and her personal email account was hacked. From the personal account, we believe the hacker was able to gain information which allowed access to this employee's Google Apps account which contained Docs, Calendars, and other Google Apps Twitter relies on for sharing notes, spreadsheets, ideas, financial details and more within the company. Since then, we have performed a security audit and reminded everyone of the importance of personal security guidelines.

This attack had nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps which we continue to use. This is more about Twitter being in enough of a spotlight that folks who work here can become targets. In fact, around the same time, Evan's wife's personal email was hacked and from there, the hacker was able to gain access to some of Evan's personal accounts such as Amazon and PayPal but not email. This isn't about any flaw in web apps, it speaks to the importance of following good personal security guidelines such as choosing strong passwords.

And, a question many are asking: will Twitter sue the blog that published a number of these documents today?

Over at Wired's Danger Room blog, David Hambling has an extensive post up about a new series of "less-lethal" weapons from "controversial electroshock weaponeer" Taser International. , is shown above. As Hambling notes, results from safety and field tests of Taser's new gear, which includes the eXtended Range Electronic Projectile (XREP) above, is coming along far more slowly. But hey, at least those new weapons are tweeting!

The Taser X3 has its own Facebook page and, worst of all, it Twitters. Presumably the agency were briefed to come up with something cute and non-threatening. Evidently they decided that the X3's image should come across less as Arnold Schwarzenegger and more as Paris Hilton, judging from these tweets:

"Check out my color screen. Like a Tele-Tubby ... only a little more intense!"

"Just out of the solar radiation box. Tanning bed for TASER's... 3 months of Arizona summer sun radiation. Check that one off!"

"Never thought I'd get so excited about the feel of a safety switch. But wait until you feel it - smooooooth."

Safety Tests MIA for Taser's Shocking New Shotgun (wired.com)

Don't miss the breathing, pulsing, utterly over-the-top Taser X3 online ad campaign.

Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have figured out how to predict Social Security numbers from publicly accessible birth data with frightening accuracy. The researchers analyzed a public information source known as the "Death Master File," which includes birth data and SSNs for people who have died. The scientists found that in many instances, if you know the date and state in which a person was born, you can deduce their SSN.

With just two attempts, the researchers correctly guessed the first five digits of SSNs for 60 percent of deceased Americans born between 1989 and 2003. With fewer than 1,000 attempts, they could identify the entire nine digits for 8.5 percent of the group.

There's only a few short steps between making a statistical prediction about a person's SSN and verifying their actual number, Acquisti said. Through a process called "tumbling," hackers can exploit instant online credit approval services -- or even the Social Security Administration's own verification database -- to test multiple numbers until they find the right one. Although these services usually block users after several failed attempts, criminals can use networks of compromised computers called botnets to scan thousands of numbers at a time.

"A botnet can be programmed to try variations of a Social Security number to apply for an instant credit card," Acquisti said. "In 60 seconds, these services tell you whether you are approved or not, so they can be abused to tell whether you've hit the right social security number."

Social Security Numbers Deduced From Public Data (Wired Science)

Predicting Social Security numbers from public data: Abstract (text) and full article (PDF) (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, a physicist who's got a good rep with her local news media, describes the process she went through to calculate the sound-bites explaining how a styrofoam soda-cup thrown from an oncoming car managed to smash the windscreen of the car it hit.

The reporter for Channel 8 asked me what the force actually meant. The best way to describe it would be that a scale placed on the windshield would register between 20 and 120 lbs when the cup hit. That quick calculation convinced me that it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that a drink cup could actually break a windshield. If the cup were thrown, even a pretty bad arm could give it an additional 30-40 mph, so the force could have been much larger.

When we taped my interview for Channel 8, the reporter asked if it mattered how the cup was oriented when it hit. It does. Brandon - who is just a joy to work with - had pitched them the idea of taping the segment in front of a car using a Sonic cup as a prop, so I had the cup right there. This was a question that just came up, so I hadn't had a lot of time to think about it. That always makes me nervous because the last think you want is to be captured on tape saying something wrong. Sonic_CupShape

It does make a difference. Compare what happens when a cup hits bottom first or side first, as I've tried to illustrate to the right. The bottom of the cup is really rigid, so there isn't going to be a lot of give. If it hits side first, the cup is going to give. If you've ever grabbed a flimsy drink cup and it squished and the lid came off, that's exactly what would happen. This is the exact same principle the SAFER barriers use for racetracks. Deforming the wall increases the time it takes for a car to come to a stop, and that decreases the force the driver feels. If the cup hit side first, it wouldn't create as much force as if it hit end first.

And, of course, I wasn't mentally or numerically agile enough to think to calculate the kinetic energy during the taping. A 2 lb cup of soda going 130 mph would have the same kinetic energy as a baseball thrown at 150 mph, or the same energy you get from exploding a half gram of TNT. (Total tangent: A 44 oz Coke contains 371 kilocalories of energy, which is equal to the kinetic energy of a passenger car going 86 mph.)

dial-a-scientist

I wrote my latest Guardian column after hearing security experts lament, for the nth time, that sensitive systems like MRI machines, defense-contractor computers, and so on should never be connected to the Internet, and when these are compromised by spies, malware or worms, it's the fault of bad network policy.

I realized that this lament was like the one you hear from people who bemoan kids having sex and getting pregnant or catching diseases, "If they'd just abstain..."

Abstinence programs don't work -- not in IT, and not for teens' sex:

Every time a state secret disappears from an internet-connected PC, every time a hospital computer reboots itself in the middle of a surgical procedure because it has just downloaded the latest patch, every time an MRI machine gets infected with an internet worm, I hear security experts declaiming, "Those computers should never be connected to the internet!" and shaking their heads at the foolish users and the foolish IT department that gave rise to a situation where sensitive functions were being executed on a computer connected to the seething, malware-haunted public internet.

But no amount of head-shaking is going to change the fact that computers, by and large, get connected. It's what they're designed to do. You might connect to the internet without even meaning to (for example, if your computer knows that it's allowed to connect to a BT Wi-Fi access point, it will connect and disconnect from hundreds of them if you carry it with you through the streets of London).

Operating systems are getting more promiscuous about net connections, not less: expect operating systems to start seeking out Bluetooth-enabled 3G phones and using them to reach out to the net when nothing else is available.

All evidence suggests that keeping computers off the internet is a losing battle. And even if you think you can discipline your workers into staying offline, wouldn't it be lovely if you had a security solution that worked even if someone broke the rules? "You shouldn't be having net at your age, but if you do, you should at least practice safe hex."

Like teenagers, computers are built to hook up

Alex Steffen from WorldChanging sez, "We need lots of innovation, quickly, to solve the big problems we face. Right now, regulation, liability and social norms make certain kinds of innovation (in architecture, urban design, energy and water systems, gardening, product design and so on) extremely difficult. But what if we could set up experimentation areas to experiment with new solutions, the same way the Chinese set up special economic zones to try capitalism?"

Existence is the ultimate proof of the possible. Every time a bold new project is tried, and works, we advance our sense of the achievable. Given how much transformation we need in order to meet the challenges we face, we need many more attempts at innovation, and we're not getting them. The achievable is not advancing quickly enough. ...

In many ways, the Global North is as hamstrung in the face of bright green challenges as China was in the face of capitalism. What if the answer is a sustainability and social innovation equivalent of China's answers: a sort of "Special Innovation Zone"?

Imagine a place -- perhaps a shrinking city, or a badly savaged brownfield neighborhood -- where laws were set up to strip rules and regulations down to a do-no-harm minimum (maintaining criminal laws and protecting health, safety, workers' rights and civil liberties, but perhaps limiting liability and certainly slashing red tape and delays) allowing for wild deviations from existing patterns for buildings, systems and operations. Imagine a free-fire zone for sustainable innovations, where new approaches could be iterated and tested rapidly, and, when they work, sent to proliferate outside the Zone. Conversely, some of the freedom might paradoxically come from imposing boundary limitations that can't yet be made practical or survive politically outside the Zone, such as bans on broad classes of chemicals or strict greenhouse gas emissions limits.

Hmm, I dunno. Regulation is an impediment to innovation (for example, it's hard to play with cognitive radio when the FCC says that you can't talk in claimed bands, guard bands, etc). But SEZs are also places where countries have experimented with horrendous working conditions, human trafficking, rampant environmental degradation, and other subjects of regulatory "red tape." And it's not easy to say where one ends and the other begins -- take the cognitive radio example. If you've got a theory that you can use cooperative frequency-hopping, directional transmission with phased arrays, and other technologies to make more signal happen in the same spectrum, is the "safety" regulation that prohibits emitting in bands used by emergency services or radio astronomers "red tape" or "safety"?

Special Innovation Zone: Imagination Without Regulation (Thanks, Alex!)

Bell's Theorem and the Death of Locality? Or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument? We may never know what the beef was, but an argument between two homeless men about the splitting of atoms resulted in the splitting of lip:

A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today.

Jason Everett Keller, 40, allegedly accosted another homeless man, Stephan Fava, on the 200 block of Grand Avenue in South San Francisco at about 1:45 p.m. March 30.

At the time, Fava was chatting with an acquaintance, who is also homeless, about "quantum physics and the splitting of atoms," according to prosecutors.

Keller joined in the conversation and, for reasons unknown, got upset, authorities said. He picked up his skateboard and hit Fava in the face with it, splitting his lip, prosecutors said.

Physics discussion ends in skateboard attack (SF Gate, image via Computer Science for Fun)

Best follow-up line, from Wagner James Au in the BB comments here:

"Fava retaliated by tossing mangy alley cat nicknamed Schrödinger at his assailant."

Update: BB commenter orangebag identified the perp as none other than "Cosmic Stan."

"Where's my cheese? Don't take my rowboat! Got no room!" the lunatic screamed from his regular spot near the Campus Drive bus stop. "I need space! Gimme space! Infinite dimensional separable Hilbert space!"

Clear, Steve Brill's second baby turkey (the first being "Brill's Content") flops:

[Clear] rolled out with great fanfare July 18, 2005, in Orlando. Travelers initially paid $99 a year for a card that was supposed to target those who posed a minimum security risk, and give them a special line that would process them through airport security more quickly.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was slow to release the program from the pilot phase, finally giving the green light to roll out the program in January 2007. The program hit a snag after TSA halted the use of GE SRT kiosks designed to serve as a shoe scanner and explosives detection system, blunting one of the program's key benefits - allowing passengers to keep on shoes and jackets, and keep laptop computers in their bags.

If you were foolish enough to sign up for the service, or receive it for free as a conference amenity or executive perk (I know some good folks who did), now might be a good time to review Clear's data privacy policy (PDF Link). Oh wait, that's right...

Clear Shuts Down Registered Traveler Lanes (aviationweek.com, via Dan Gillmor)

Related: Clear Airport Security Program Closes Abruptly; Will Flo Take Over?

Photo: Rosie Hardy. About the image:

I got the idea for this a few days ago. I was setting up my camera in a car park near a supermarket in my town, because it had a wall I wanted to use in a 365, away from all the cars. I'd been there literally two minutes and I heard a man shout "Dissemble your camera NOW" behind me. He turned out to be from security, and told me to delete any photos I had taken infront of him so he could make sure there were none on my card. I asked him why after I had done so, and he told me that it was because of possible terrorist attacks. (...) Everywhere has gone completely public safety mad.

(Via Gordon Gould)

Rodney Salomon-Prudo (above), a fisherman from Madeira Beach, Florida, netted a rusty old supersonic AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missile while fishing in the Gulf of Mexico late last month.

The missile was about 8 feet long. Such a catch is a rare occurrence, despite the fact that Air Force fighter jets test fire some 300 missiles each year in the area.

In fact, Florida's share of the Gulf of Mexico is a military test range. And Captain Salomon said he pulled two missiles off the sea floor during his two-week trip.

But he left the other missile behind -- "brand new and still beeping," the captain said -- which perhaps was for the best.

After all, Tampa Bay barely handled the excitement of one missile turning up on its shores Monday, hauled in by a fisherman who had strapped it to his boat for 10 days in rolling seas, prompting a 500-foot evacuation around the Tom Stuart Causeway, a media circus and a military bomb squad's visit.

But it was all for naught. At first authorities on Monday described the air-to-air missile as "live." But Tuesday the Air Force said it was actually "inert," the explosive warhead removed before it was test-fired.

Fisherman laments losing Sidewinder 'souvenir'; Air Force says missile found Monday wasn't armed (Tampabay.com)

(Download MP4)

In today's episode of Boing Boing Video, space/aviation/tech reporter Miles O'Brien speaks with me about the role of technology in the recent Air France crash.

He answers a number of questions posed here on Boing Boing by commenters on our previous episodes: how "black boxes" work, why they're not built to float, whether they would be more effective if they streamed data constantly while in use, and whether more training in the "lower-tech" aspects of piloting could have helped.

Since we taped this two-way conversation on Friday, recovery teams off the coast of Brazil have recovered some 16 bodies, and wreckage from the crash.

Here's a snip from his latest blog post about the disaster, over at True Slant.

The Air France 447 mystery may never be solved beyond a shadow of doubt, but there are some telling, tragic clues to consider based on what we know about the airplane systems and the extreme weather and aerodynamic conditions it encountered before it went down a week ago.

First, a bit of aerodynamics: The doomed Airbus A-330-200 was flying ever so close to its maximum altitude - in a zone pilots call the "Coffin Corner". It refers to the edge of so-called "flight envelope" of an aircraft. At this altitude, the air is much thinner and that significantly narrows the swath of speed at which the airplane can safely operate.

Read the whole post: "The 'Coffin Corner' and a 'Mesoscale' Maw." And speaking of True Slant, check out these two articles about the recently-launched site, a rare refuge for hardcore journalism in these hard times: Washington Post, and Associated Press.

If you're interested in this story -- or in aviation and space news in general -- you really should also follow Miles on Twitter to see his thought-stream unfold in real time.

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Sponsor shout-out: This week's Boing Boing Video episodes are brought to you in part by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "will influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."

Former BB guestblogstress Maggie Koerth-Baker has a piece up on MSN today about food-borne illnesses -- a topic near and dear to my gut, having just spent a few weeks on the road in rural Central America, where every food choice one makes as a visitor is not so much, "will this taste good" as "how likely is this to give me a week's worth of the runs"?

"Ironically, three days after turning that in, I actually came down with what is likely mild foodborne illness myself," tweeted Maggie, "It's fun!" Here's a snip from the section about Campylobacter (shown above, from Flickr user dokidok's stream):

Campy" is the leading cause of bacteria-related diarrhea in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration. In fact, experts say it's likely you've had a run-in with Campy before, and just not realized it. So why the low profile?

There are a couple of reasons. First off, campy's just not that mean of a bug. Catch it and you can expect a week of flu-like symptoms, plus diarrhea. "I'm not volunteering to get it, but at the same time it generally doesn't result in hospitalization or death," says Jim Dickson, a professor of animal science at Iowa State University and head of the multi-university Food Safety Consortium.

Campy's pattern of infection is also a factor. The big-name food sickness outbreaks tend to be multi-state affairs, involving hundreds of people. Campy, in contrast, is more sporadic. An "outbreak" often means a bad week for one family. That's because this bug is a delicate creature. Heat it up, dry it out, deprive it of oxygen--lots of things will kill it quickly.

Take a Bite Out of Food-Borne Illnesses This Summer (MSN Health)

Miles O'Brien, whose work we've been featuring recently as a Boing Boing Video guest contributor, has been covering the Air France crash intensively on True Slant and in short bursts on Twitter. Here's a snip from his latest blog post, about the effort to retreive the plane's "black boxes."

Now that searchers have found some floating remnants of Air France 447 in the Atlantic 430 miles (700 kilometers) north of the Fernando de Noronha islands, the hard work of trying to locate the Airbus' "black boxes" - the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder - can begin. This is actually much worse than the proverbial needle in the haystack, because in that case, the assumption is the needle can be found after expending a lot of time and energy. These boxes might very well be truly lost to the abyss.

But of course they still must try to find them as well as any wreckage of the Airbus A-330.

To that end, a French research ship with a submersible capable of diving to a depth of 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) is steaming to the area. The French transport Ministry says the ship carries equipment "able to explore more than 97% of the ocean bed area, specifically in the search area." I some spots, Atlantic is more than 20,000 feet deep in the area where searchers found the floating debris.

The submersible will be listening for the distinctive "pinging" noise that these boxes are designed to emit once they are submerged in water. They are supposed to "ping" for thirty days in water as deep as 20,000 feet. Sonar used by surface ships is only good to about a thousand feet of depth - so it is essential to send some "ears" deep beneath the sea in order to find the boxes. These sonar devices can be towed by ships or ply the deep on their own power.

Long Odds Search for Black Boxes (Trueslant.com)

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A "highly confidential" 266-page report with details on hundreds of American nuclear sites and programs was this week discovered to have been accidentally published online by the federal government.

Each page is marked "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL SAFEGUARDS SENSITIVE" in all caps on the top of the page. The document also contained maps with the locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.

Steven Aftergood's (excellent) Secrecy News ezine picked it up first, and re-published the PDF. Snip from NYT story by William Broad:

As of Tuesday evening, the reasons for that action remained a mystery. On its cover, the document attributes its publication to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. But Lynne Weil, the committee spokeswoman, said the committee had "neither published it nor had control over its publication."

Gary Somerset, a spokesman for the printing office, said it had "produced" the document "under normal operating procedures" but had now removed it from its Web site pending further review.

The document contains no military information about the nation's stockpile of nuclear arms, or about the facilities and programs that guard such weapons. Rather, it presents what appears to be an exhaustive listing of the sites that make up the nation's civilian nuclear complex, which stretches coast to coast and includes nuclear reactors and highly confidential sites at weapon laboratories.

Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, revealed the existence of the document on Monday in Secrecy News, an electronic newsletter he publishes on the Web.

Mr. Aftergood expressed bafflement at its disclosure, calling it "a one-stop shop for information on U.S. nuclear programs."

U.S. Releases Secret List of Nuclear Sites Accidentally (NYT)

FAS.org still has a copy of the PDF up at the time of this BB blog post.

(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)

In this episode of Boing Boing Video, guest contributor Miles O'Brien, the veteran space and science reporter formerly with CNN, speaks with astronaut Scott Parazynski as he attempts to summit Mt. Everest.

Parazynski and his team are scheduled to actually attempt the summit within the next day or two, as I understand their current plans.

They are using a personal satellite tracking device called "Spot" as a security measure. The GPS device has the added benefit of providing digital breadcrumbs of data that can be used to generate real-time maps of exactly where they are on the trail.

More of Miles "1337" O'Brien's work at True/Slant, and you can (and should) follow him here on Twitter.

Astronaut-turned-climber Scott Parazynski's Everest climb blog is here, and you can also follow him on Twitter, live from Nepal.

Below, a screengrab of their current coordinates -- and a snapshot of Scott at rest on Mount Everest. After the jump, more photos.

(Previously: Boing Boing Video: Welcome, Miles O'Brien!)

A worker at one of AT&T's San Jose offices opened a refrigerator full of rotten, forgotten cow-orker chow and released a gas so noxious that the building had to be evacuated and a hazmat team had to be called in.

Authorities said an enterprising office worker had decided to clean it out, placing the food in a conference room while using two cleaning chemicals to scrub down the mess. The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.

Authorities said the worker who cleaned the fridge didn't need treatment -- she can't smell because of allergies.

Rotten office fridge cleanup sends 7 to hospital (via /.)

Video Link. The Art of Bleeding Magic Ambulance crew, featuring Abram the Safety Ape and R2 the robot, respond to the Swine Flu crisis. "Nurses, robots, duct tape, and pork are involved," explains Reverend Al Ridenour. CAST & Crew: Phil Glau, Randy Horton, Selene Luna, Auriana-Lynn, Radhika Hersey, Emmeline Chang, Vima Sophia, Howard Hallis, Dapper Cadaver, Eric Ridenour, Al Ridenour.

Yesterday, I blogged about a new for-profit 'net censorship evasion tool called Psiphon. A member of the anonymity development community reached out with concerns. I'm blogging them here in the interest of presenting the full range of views on this subject from people in the community.

I see that Boing Boing is discussing Psiphon. This greatly concerns me because of their lack of transparency and accountability. Psiphon imply (but refuse to state explicitly) that they are in the anonymity business, yet they do not even have a publicly stated privacy policy. They are vague about their security claims and, even assuming good faith, have not disclosed any useful information on their security model and implementation.

Aside from the fact that they are, as a for-profit company handling personal information, required under Canadian law to disclose their privacy policy, this lack of transparency leaves me with serious concerns about their motivations and competence. This is especially troubling when one considers that their entire product is essentially a centrally administered proxy run with software unknown to the users. What do they store? What do they claim? How can we verify? Nothing? Something? Everything?

To sign up for their service, one either has to know Psiphon or know someone who uses Psiphon; this necessarily requires a knowledge of relationships on their part. For many users, I suspect this is a minor risk that seems remote until one again considers that this is a for-profit company. Do they promise to do anything with any of this data? Do they plan to store it forever? Do they promise to destroy it if they're ever offered money for their company? What happens if they are simply offered money for the data? Wouldn't it be better to avoid that temptation entirely by not requiring or keeping any of that data?

(More after the jump).