stray bullets

That Rothschild clan in full: eccentricity, money, influence and scandal Nat Rothschild’s career path – from playboy to plutocrat – has to be seen against the backdrop of his family history, studded as it is with eccentrics who were torn between loyalty to an immense and powerful name and the urge to break away from the clan. An interesting look at the 3rd Baron Rothschild and the celebrated, reviled and feared family of global players and manipulators. (via)

Turkish police may have beaten encryption key out of TJ Maxx suspect Otherwise known as rubber-hose cryptanalysis. (via)

Is surfing the Internet altering your brain? The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.

What I've Learned: John Malkovich There will be people who will hate anything you do. And some people will really love it. But that's not really different from the people who really hate it. You could learn a thing or two from what he's learned. (via)

also:
Judge Slams RIAA Tactics (via)
A guide to the Hippocratic Oath
Seven of the greatest scientific hoaxes
Top 10 Science Hoaxes
Evolution of Logos (pictoral history of well known logo designs) (via)
How to Take Better Photographs
Audio Slideshow: Photos compete for the Prix Pictet
Listen to Genius (audio library) (via)
Andrei Codrescu: Life Without Smell May Not Be Worth It (audio)
Pinewood Dialogues (conversations with film, TV, digital media innovators and creators) (audio) (via)

A by-product of obsessively, constantly surfing the net to discover the bright and the shiny is a steady flow of promising new ideas. Mostly slight variations on existing great ideas that tickle your fancy. Rands In Repose: FriendDA (via)

viddy:
FreakyFlicks (obscure torrents) (via)
Studs Terkel a/v linkdump
Film, Art and Creative Television (exclusive videos and interviews with artists and filmmakers) (via)
The greatest choreography in film history
Kids in the Hall - Sausages
Pig Fights Lion (wow)
Good for Nothing, Peanut-Stealing Cat (via)
Klaus Nomi's Lime Tart Recipe (doc)

"Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think." - John Cage, 'Rules for Students and Teachers' (via)

stray bullets

Mafiaboy grows up; a hacker seeks redemption The Internet attack took Yahoo Inc. engineers by surprise. It came so fast and with such intensity that Yahoo, then the Web's second most-popular destination, was knocked offline for about three hours. That was on the morning of Feb. 7, 2000. A few months later, 15-year-old Michael Calce was watching Goodfellas at a friend's house in the suburbs of Montreal when he got a 3 a.m. call on his cell phone. His father was on the line. "They're here," he said. A hacker seeks a career. This seems to be the standard arc: make news, get busted, do time, write a book, become a security consultant.

Follow up: Almost human: Interview with a chatbot No machine has yet passed. But the winner of the Loebner Prize at the weekend – Elbot, brainchild of Fred Roberts at Artificial Solutions in Germany – came close, according to the contest's rather generous rules.

Ocean Containers To Bury According to most survivalist sites, ocean containers can be buried, hidden away under the ground outfitted with electricals, rudementary plumbing, and all the food and water you can store for several months of keeping a low profile. While we at American Steel have seen it done, I'd like to give a word of caution.... Anyone planning to use a container for anything should take note. (via)

Downloads soar despite crackdown Music downloads among US adults have risen sharply during the past several months, despite a crackdown by the music industry to curb such behaviour. Few I know could afford their music collection. (via)

also:
Recurring science misconceptions in K-6 textbooks (via)
First look at Downey Jr and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson
$56,000 Turntable Only An Audiophile Could Love
Surrealist techniques (via)

viddy:
Buffalo Dance featuring Hair Coat, Last Horse, and Parts His Hair
Trio: Da Da Da
Alien Contact: What will happen on October 14 (thx, dave)

stray bullets

Crick was right about 'vision filter' in the brain As you read this sentence, your mind hones in on each word and blots out the rest of the page. This roving spot of attention tames the flood of visual information that hundreds of thousand of nerves attached to the back of your eye's retina stream into the brain. So far, most scientists held that the brain's outermost layer and main site of consciousness, the cortex, is responsible for housing the attention steering mechanisms that sort out all this sensory input. But back in 1984, the co-discoverer of DNA Francis Crick suggested that a simpler structure called the thalamus may also play a part in this process. Once thought to be only a highway that connects the eyes to the cortex, it could contain a mental searchlight that filters what we pay attention to, Crick proposed.

Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers Increasingly, authors, teachers, librarians and publishers are embracing this fast-paced, image-laden world in the hope that the games will draw children to reading.

Welcome to the official site for the BBC Prison Study The BBC Prison Study explores the social and psychological consequences of putting people in groups of unequal power. It examines when people accept inequality and when they challenge it. Based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. (via)

also:
King Wenceslas of Bohemia
American Revolution 101
Louis Prima and Space Junk "Wanting connections, we found connections -- always, everywhere, and between everything." Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum. (wink)
Top 10 Everyday Things People Do To Ruin Their Cars (via)

viddy:
Generation Tehran (roughly 70% of Iran's population is under 30 and they're hungry for change) (via)
Elvis is not dead And he's hacking RFID passport scanners.
Sinatra and Jobim (nice)
Cziffra playing Liszt's Transcendental Etude no.10 (smokin')

stray bullets

Scientists receive death threats over 'end-of-world' experiment The scientists behind the world's biggest ever scientific experiment have received death threats from critics who claim it could cause the end of the world. What? "If you destroy the world, I'll kill you." seems like a pointless threat.

Researchers Use Facebook App to Create Zombie Army Computer researchers built a tool that demonstrates how hackers could silently turn Facebook users into a powerful zombie army that can attack other websites or scout for vulnerable sites on the net. Some might maintain that Facebook already has a powerful zombie army.

also:
Brazil oil boom 'to end poverty'
Hand Weapons of Trench Raiders, WWI
How To Spot A Heart Attack Soon After It Occurs
Murder map of London, 1888 (via)

viddy:
Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos
『Gypsy Rhythm Machine Crazy Beatbox(動画)』
Zen Wind - Yoga and the Art of Farting (via)

stray bullets

World's largest machine--the electric grid--is old and outdated The U.S. electric grid is so old and outdated it can't handle the influx of wind power and other intermittent renewable resources.

Space Station Dodges Orbital Junk The International Space Station fired its rocket engines to dodge space junk for the first time in five years on Wednesday.

Is It Possible To Teach Experience? Business veterans claim you cannot teach ‘experience’, but European researchers say you can. (via)

The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn Storytelling is one of the few human traits that are truly universal across culture and through all of known history. Anthropologists find evidence of folktales everywhere in ancient cultures, written in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian and Sumerian. People in societies of all types weave narratives, from oral storytellers in hunter-gatherer tribes to the millions of writers churning out books, television shows and movies. And when a characteristic behavior shows up in so many different societies, researchers pay attention: its roots may tell us something about our evolutionary past.

also:
Top 10 Amazing Prison Escapes
10 Things Millionaires Won't Tell You
Now Hear This: Don't Remove Earwax (I always suspected that those Chinese candles weren't so good for you.)
6 Funny Things About Asimov's Foundation Series
The Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive (via)

viddy:
Cockfighting and dominoes: Haiti's poor at play (via)
Hackers prepare supermarket sweep
Groucho Marx on the Dick Cavett Show

stray bullets

Update: Best Western refutes story claiming 8 million customer records were breached Hotel chain confirms intrusion, but says that only 13 records at a single hotel were exposed.

Giant Galaxy Cluster Seen in Early Universe The discovery of this far-off group, estimated to contain as much mass as a thousand large galaxies, offers further proof of the existence of the enigmatic force called dark energy.

Daphne Oram – Oramics (Drawing sound) A lesser known but important contributor in the field of ‘drawn’ electronic music is British composer Daphne Oram who worked at the legendary BBC Radiophonic workshop in the late 1950’s. Oram dreamed of making a machine that directly translated graphical notation into sound and this dream came to fruitful realisation with her technique of Oramics. (prev)

also:
Surviving the Biggest Wave Ever (via)
Volcanos in Our Times (photo essay)
Bigelow Aerospace Advances Work on Full-scale Space Habitat
How the Roaring Twenties Changed the World
10 Top Spectacular Festivals in the World
Greg Egan interview

viddy:
Luc de Heusch - Tracking the Pale Fox (mythology and rituals of the Dogon)
Experts' memory: Not as expert as they think (take the test)
Thomas Kuntz Incredible Decapitation Automaton (creepy)
Outrageous My Little Pony collection

Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person? — François de la Rochefoucauld (1613-80) (via)

stray bullets

Surveillance made easy Now German electronics company Siemens has gone a step further, developing a complete "surveillance in a box" system called the Intelligence Platform, designed for security services in Europe and Asia. It has already sold the system to 60 countries. According to a document obtained by New Scientist, the system integrates tasks typically done by separate surveillance teams or machines, pooling data from sources such as telephone calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions and insurance records. It then sorts through this mountain of information using software that Siemens dubs "intelligence modules".... However, it is far from clear whether the technology will prove accurate. Security experts warn that data-fusion technologies tend to produce a huge number of false positives, flagging up perfectly innocent people as suspicious.

Revealed: 8 million victims in the world's biggest cyber heist A Sunday Herald investigation has discovered that late on Thursday night, a previously unknown Indian hacker successfully breached the IT defences of the Best Western Hotel group's online booking system and sold details of how to access it through an underground network operated by the Russian mafia. (via)

Historian suggests Southerners defeated Confederacy This interview will blow away everything you thought you knew about the South and the Civil War. It is a matter of fact that a majority (95+%) of Southerners did not own slaves. A substantial and in some places an overwhelming majority did not support the Confederacy. To this day, Southerners bear the brunt of negative popular opinion that they do not deserve. Most people in the South are not racist and are some of the finest, friendliest and most neighborly people I have met in this country. It's time that people pulled their heads out on this issue.

In a Father’s Clutter, Historic Oddities When her father, John Lattimer, died in May of 2007 at the age of 92, Ms. Lattimer knew her inheritance would include more than the family tea set. Dr. Lattimer, a prominent urologist at Columbia University, was also a renowned collector of relics, many of which might be considered quirky or even macabre. Over the course of seven decades he amassed more than 3,000 objects that ranged in age from a few years to tens of millions of years. “He was like a classic Renaissance collector,” said Tony Perrottet, a writer specializing in historical mysteries who spent time with Dr. Lattimer before his death. “Anything and everything could turn up in the collection, from Charles Lindbergh’s goggles to a bearskin coat that belonged to Custer.”

also:
The next president will disappoint you
Opinion: Why Google has lost its mojo -- and why you should care
Models of Invention: the Science Fiction of Leonardo da Vinci (via)
Help Crack the Russian Hacker Mystery
Early American Counterfeiting
Myra Hindley painting taints London 2012 celebrations
Michael Chabon on 'writers who can dwell between worlds' (via)
Open Sound New Orleans ~A Collaborative Soundmap of the City~ (via)
Fellini's Book of Dreams

viddy:
Mars: Springtime 2020
UCB: Hot Chicks Room
Herbie Hancock - Crossings - Oeuvre réalisée par Philippe Charpentier

stray bullets

Top 10 Exoplanets: Weird Worlds in a Galaxy Not So Far Away (slide show)
China hacker gang issues diplomas…goes to jail (via)
Facebook won't approve woman for account because her family name is "Yoda." (Assbook) (via)
Why Rhona Cameron would make a better Bill Hicks than Russell Crowe
Sir Francis Drake: No Hero's Death

Atomic Wednesday: Operation: Teapot

viddy:
Vladimir Nabokov discusses Lolita part 1 of 2 (part 2 of 2) (via)

stray bullets

Mexico's Cocaine Capital The bullet holes in the safe-house door tell you who's winning Mexico's drug war. The armor-piercing ammunition, fired from the inside by drug traffickers, shredded the 20-gauge steel like small cannonballs; the rounds fired from the outside, by federal police, merely punctured the metal like so much bird shot. After that midnight firefight on May 27--the result of a botched police raid in the desert city of Culiacán in northwestern Mexico--seven cops lay dead. Only one narco gunman died; the rest, at least half a dozen, escaped. For neighbors, the carnage carried an unambiguous message. "I realized," says Victor Rodríguez, a fishmonger and family man, "that the power of the narcos has surpassed the power of my government."

Cyber War and Cyber Terrorism in India India is also suffering from the menaces of cyber war and cyber terrorism. Nobody cares about any these threats in India. Far more citizens were concerned of the Amarnath issue than by potential risks of nuclear conflict, or near-breakdowns in Net and mobile security. China's intensified cyber warfare against India is becoming a serious threat to national security. (via)

India's 'fragrant' rubbish dumps Authorities in the western Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) have been dousing rubbish dumps with perfume to lessen the putrid stench. Loved this: "Segregation of garbage is the solution to reducing stench," he said. (via)

also:
He dreamt up Bond, but did Fleming also create the CIA? (maybe helped) (via)
13 things that do not make sense (via)
A Conversation with Malcolm McDowell (audio)

viddy:
Buzz Aldrin Interview
Jay J. Ames, private investigator with hands of steel
Gordon Bradt's Six Man Clock Kinetic Sculpture
Interview with Douglas Hofstadter (en français)

stray bullets

Science close to unveiling invisible man Invisibilty devices, long the realm of science fiction and fantasy, have moved closer after scientists engineered a material that can bend visible light around objects.

How to blow it It's the most winnable presidential election in American history - but the Democrats are old hands at losing. Michael Moore offers some helpful hints on how they might gift it all to the Republicans. (via)

Covert operation floats network-sniffing balloon Hidden in the back of a 22-foot moving truck, Hill and his team of about a dozen volunteers launched the balloon Friday morning, sending it 150 feet into the air for about 20 minutes to use special antennas and scanning software to scope out the Las Vegas skyline for unsecured wireless networks, an activity Hill calls "warballooning." Hackers have practiced wardriving for years, driving around in cars with computers and specialized software that sniffs for networks.

Controller praised for texting pilot down safely Five people on a flight from Kerry to Jersey received mobile phone text instructions from a quick-thinking air traffic controller when he guided them in to a safe landing at Cork. (via)

What's the big deal? It's the little things Again and again, American history has turned on the dime of such tiny things. The Watergate conspiracy might have unraveled no matter what, but it was a strip of tape on a Watergate building office door that alerted a security guard that burglars were about. Jimmy Carter's presidency might have crashed and burned anyway, but it was a crashing and burning helicopter in the sands of Iran during a failed rescue of American hostages that may have sealed his loss in 1980... The way small causes yield huge effects is itself only one piece of the much grander idea of simplexity, a science that is increasingly being studied at universities and institutes around the world... (via)

Is That a Real Reality, or Did You Make It Up Yourself? The idea that music can transform reality predates by many millennia the category "music" as we know it. Before art was understood as a phenomenon in itself apart from its ritual application (a relatively recent and culturally specific development), what we now call music was indistinguishable from magic. (via)

Vin Mariani A good 20 years before the original cocaine-infused Coca-Cola taught the world to grind its teeth and give ineffectual bathroom-stall handjobs in per•fect har•mo•ny, there was another drink of choice among those wishing to feel invigorated and overconfident for no good reason. It was called “coca wine” and it was loved not only by self-important blowhards wearing too much jewelry but by Kings and Popes and…

also:
Two Great Stories - BOTH TRUE - and worth reading!
I don’t care about fonts (via)
Penniless author sells shares in next novel (good idea) (via)
Athlete-bloggers at the Beijing Olympics
The Hardest Places in the World to Find a Bathroom
A Look at the Secret Service, and More from CRS

viddy:
Lecture on Marcus Auprelius (via)
Reggie Watts - F*$K,S#%T,STACK (NSFW) (via)
daedelus on the monome

stray bullets

Beijing Taxis Are Rigged for Eavesdropping As with digital cameras used in cities such as London, Sydney or New York, the stated purpose of the microphones is to protect the driver. But whereas the devices in other countries can only record images, those devices in Beijing taxis can be remotely activated without the driver's knowledge to eavesdrop on passengers, according to drivers and Yaxon Networks Co., a Chinese company that makes some of the systems used in Beijing. The machines can even remotely shut off engines. The whole world is rigged for eavesdropping. (via)

They Will Survive UNLESS John D. McCann, the managing director of Survival Resources, based in Hyde Park, N.Y., is wearing a suit for some sort of business meeting, he always carries in his pants pocket an Altoids tin. There are no mints inside it. Instead, he painstakingly packs the tin — which he explains can double as a mini-frying pan if you’re ever marooned in the wilderness — with a remarkable assortment of worst-case scenario supplies. Survival is good. (via)

Credit card thieves ran a polite, professional help desk Organized criminals often seen to be a step or two ahead of the competition. Many of us would settle for a help desk that was helpful.

also:
The Most Important Generation in History is the One Now Alive
blog all dog-eared pages: understanding media (McLuhan)
Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time (like the list, not the order) (via)
Gear Porn: Chemical Brothers Daft Punk
Cleveland Museum of Art via Flickr
Bartleby, the Scrivener.pdf (via)
The temple of tame tigers (photo essay) (patient, maybe)
A PhD in Ufology (via)
Frankie Knuckles Interview
Michel Gondry writes a comic book (via)

viddy:
An Interview With Jim Coudal (via)
The Prisoner: Caviezel and McKellen's First Reading
Smart Birds use cars to open their food (via)
Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man
Lessig on i-9/11
Powers of Ten A film dealing with the relative size of things in the universe and the effect of adding another zero.
Ladislas Starewicz - The Mascot, 1933 (creepy stop-motion animation) (more Starewicz)
Late Night TV in Japan: Spanking Class (this guy takes his spanking seriously)
MST3K 624: Samson Vs The Vampire Women (one of the best) (via)

Greetings San Martín De Sarroca!

stray bullets

Texters hurt as they walk, ride — even cook ER docs warn of serious injuries, deaths from text-message mishaps. I've seen people walk into phone poles and out in front of moving vehicles while texting. (via)

More Performance and cognitive enhancement “Within the next few years, we’ll see the second generation of these drugs,” says Mark Gordon, an endocrinologist in Los Angeles. “Like all second-generation drugs, they will be stronger, longer-lasting, and have fewer side effects.” (via)

Floatation tank horror A 30-year-old became the first person ever to drown in a floatation tank, an inquest heard yesterday. James Richardson, of Woodley, died in Floatnation in Oxford Road after taking the drug ketamine – used to tranquillise horses. Well, I can scratch that off my list of things to do before I die. (via)

also:
How to build a free computer from spare parts
76-year-old experimental music legend Pauline Oliveros on WFMU
Are figs really full of baby wasps?
19 Portrait Photography Tutorials (via)
The 7 Biggest Asshole Computers in Science Fiction (via)
Montana Meth Project does not pull any punches. (via)

viddy:
Intriguing Bigfoot video (real or hoax, it's pretty good)
Social engineering: How to Get Into Any Club (this method probably won't work forever, but it is worth a look) (via)
419 - the Nigerian Scam trailer (via)
Iran Missile Test (yeah, that one)
Darth Vader Meets Wolfman Jack!

stray bullets

How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry Most researchers agree that the value of the U.S. marijuana crop has increased sharply since the mid-nineties, as California and twelve other states have passed medical-marijuana laws. A drug-policy analyst named Jon Gettman recently estimated that in 2006 Californians grew more than twenty million pot plants. He reckoned that between 1981 and 2006 domestic marijuana production increased tenfold, making pot the leading cash crop in America, displacing corn. A 2005 State Department report put the country’s marijuana crop at twenty-two million pounds. The street value of California’s crop alone may be as high as fourteen billion dollars. (via)

For Some Products, Prices Have Been Falling A fair bit in the last ten years, too. (via)

Unidentified Flying Threats A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States. (via)

Extradition appeal for British hacker dismissed A British hacker who admitted breaking into U.S. military computers hoping to uncover evidence of UFOs looks set to be extradited to the U.S. after the highest British court dismissed his appeal against the extradition on Wednesday. This guy is facing 60 years in prison for "hacking" wide open, non-password-protected military computers using a 56k modem. It was found afterward that entire suites of computers were unprotected by the most basic login passwords. They should give this guy a medal and throw their sysadmins in prison. Our government is an embarrassment. (more)

Hacking Without Exploits Black Hat researchers will demonstrate how the bad guys are quietly raking in big bucks without ninja hacking skills, tools, or exploit code (via)

Man deposits millions, one tattered bill at a time For years, authorities say, he and his family have popped in and out of U.S. banks, looking to change about $20 million in decaying $100 bills for clean cash, offering ever-changing stories... (via)

Building 'The Matrix' Now physicists have created a rudimentary prototype of a machine that simulates quantum phenomena using quantum physics, rather than using data kept in a classical computer. While the new device can't make people fly like the Matrix does, it demonstrates a technique that could enable physicists to create, in the virtual world, materials that don't yet exist in nature and perhaps figure out how to build, in the real world, superconductors that work at room temperature, for example. (via)

One teabag, one spoonful of neurotoxins The PBOI says of aspartame: “The chemical caused an unacceptable level of brain tumors in animal testing. Based on this fact, the PBOI ruled that aspartame should not be added to the food supply.” Add to that all the microwaves pumped into your brain by cellphones and you have quite a toxic brew. (via)

also:
Widespread Flaws in Online Banking Systems
Bush Administration Scandal Map (via)
Six Vacation Photos That Can Kill You (via)
Fly 1950s style From the end of July until the end of the year, Finnair’s retro plane, Silver Bird, will fly to several destinations. The cabin crew will wear 1950s-style uniforms and the beat of music from the 50s will spur the takeoff. (via)
10 Most Bizarre Restaurants
The Bureau of Atomic Tourism (via)
Billy Bob Thornton on his music and movies Big Zappa and Beefheart fan. (via)
Laurie Anderson Interview (via)
Glitter And Doom: Tom Waits In Concert Hear A Stunning Performance, Recorded At Atlanta's Fox Theater (via)
Steve Reich Interview (podcast) (via)
Voodoo Funk Record Digging in West Africa (via)

viddy:
Julie Driscoll - Season Of The Witch (groovy)
More Traffic in Tehran (even better)
I Love Sarah Jane Excellent zombie short. NSFW
Tank Man A documentary about the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

stray bullets

Pirates won't rob writers of riches Of course, if ebooks catch on, most publishing firms will go out of business. But I cannot think of many writers who will be sorry to see them go. Whenever authors gather around a bottle of wine, the sole topic of conversation is how terrible their publishers are. Their editors are illiterates, the publicity departments are staffed by airheads and the people responsible for designing their dust jackets should be shot. I blaze through ebooks about four times as fast I do print. I'm blind in one eye and dyslexic, so the medium is a help for me, but most people I know can't read ebooks. (via)

Warp Drive Engine Would Travel Faster Than Light It is possible to travel faster than light. You just wouldn't travel faster than light. (via)

Glass Does Not Flow. Except in Space? In 1999, Christie’s East in Manhattan auctioned off an assortment of space memorabilia, including a flashlight that Buzz Aldrin used during a Gemini 12 spacewalk in 1966. The auction catalog mentions: The flashlight lens became deformed while in the vacuum of space. I saw the flashlight in person. The lens is definitely deformed, just as if the glass had flowed. It’s not cracked. It’s deformed.

Police: Man Stole Miami-Dade Buses, Drove Them On Routes Police: Teen Dressed As Bus Driver, Returned Buses At End Of Day I really hope they don't send this kid to prison. (via)

Hiphop LX (linguistics) In Hiphop the WORD is the message. Language is a system of sounds and symbols and communication in any language is based on how to use that system. If you know the system, you have power over ideas and imagination. You can build, change, plan, play and destroy. Many words and expressions in hiphop represent regions, neighborhoods and cities. Hiphop Lx is dedicated to representing the words and expressions that represent and serve as a symbol for a region and area. It explores the language system of hiphop and how the word came into being, meanings and the overall development of the word and expression. It challenges everyone to represent their region with true bona fide words and present them to be researched, examined, challenged and celebrated. (via)

also:
Renaissance Men Are Evolving Into Renaissance Networks (via)
Top 100 Executives by Total Compensation (via)
The Top 10 Mad Scientists (via)
10 Things You Should Know About the Internet
25 Ways To Earn Money When You’re Broke On The Road
Dalí: Painting and Film (via)
Frank Zappa's Jukebox out Aug. 4 (via) (via)

viddy:
Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Pedal Up (awesome funky)
Wanda Jackson - Mean Mean Man
Dr. Ronald Chevalier – The Art of Relaxating (wth?)
Traffic in Tehran (traffic in UT)
Francis Fukuyama: What Kind of World Power China Will Be?
Marshall McLuhan Quotes
Woz the Wiz meets Captain Crunch (via)
Bill Drummond on Robert Anton Wilson
Man with No Arms Plays Guitar well (via)
Patti Smith Sings 'You Light Up My Life' (don't miss it)
Amazing Audio Illusion (it is amazing) (via)

stray bullets

So Much for the 'Looted Sites' A recent mission to Iraq headed by top archaeologists from the U.S. and U.K. who specialize in Mesopotamia found that, contrary to received wisdom, southern Iraq's most important historic sites -- eight of them -- had neither been seriously damaged nor looted after the American invasion. (via)

Cyber-capos: How cybercriminals mirror the mafia and businesses Cybercrime, the harvesting and sale of credit card and other data for online fraud and theft, is a "shadow economy" that mimics the real business world in its practices and the mafia in its structure, according to a new report from security firm Finjan. I wonder how much of this is typical security-pro-speak, exagerrated to generate the requisite fear to sell more security? (via)

How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried While the bounty has, not surprisingly, been welcomed by African dictators, the people of Africa are less impressed. At a market in Zimbabwe recently, where Chinese goods were on sale at nearly every stall, one woman told me she would not waste her money on 'Zing-Zong' products. 'They go Zing when they work, and then they quickly go Zong and break,' she said. 'They are a waste of money. But there's nothing else. China is the only country that will do business with us.' (via)

also:

Yeats Meets the Digital Age, Full of Passionate Intensity (via)
Videogames getting minds of their own
Alabama man turns 112, still spends days drawing

stray bullets

How CAPTCHA got trashed CAPTCHA used to be an easy and useful way for Web administrators to authenticate users. Now it's an easy and useful way for malware authors and spammers to do their dirty work. More good news.

2008 State of the Future report proposes 15 global challenges Even more good news.

How to Write With Style From one of the best. (via)

also:
Stefano De Luigi - Photo Essay: Blindness (via)
Something to Read: The Book Bike A most unusual bicycle that travels around Chicago on the weekends giving away books. (via)
This is Sand Big Time time devourer. (via)
CISMA Brazilian director, Denis Kamioka, aka CISMA, has his portfolio online. The Nike football ad is awesome. Polamalu rocks it. (via)

Western man acquired from the technology of literacy the power to act without reacting….In the electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every action. It is no longer possible to adopt the aloof and dissociated role of the literate Westerner. — Marshall McLuhan, from Understanding Media (via)

Cyberspace Operator Badge

*Proposed Cyberspace Operator Badge (USAF). Awaiting wear criteria approval.

via Strategy Page

stray bullets

Half of US Gun Deaths are Suicides The Supreme Court's landmark ruling on gun ownership last week focused on citizens' ability to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that surprisingly often, gun owners use the weapons on themselves.

Don't shoot yourself. It's a nasty business. I knew a guy who shot himself in the head and soon realized that it wasn't going to do the job, so he had to do it again. You might seriously regret your decision at a similar moment. You never know what good fortune tomorrow might bring. Life is precious and you are unique. (via)

Thieves Stealing Manhole Covers Cities and counties are battling manhole-cover thefts, a crime spree that police tie to the weak economy. Hundreds of 200-pound covers have disappeared in three months in California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Georgia as scrap metal prices pop up. "It's a sign of the times," says Sgt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office in Georgia, where 28 manhole covers disappeared in April and May. "When the economy gets bad, people start stealing iron." (....) (via)

Diary of a deliberately spammed housewife For Tracy Mooney, a married mother of three in Naperville, Ill., the decision to abandon cybersense and invite e-mail spam into her life for a month by participating in a McAfee Inc. experiment was a bit of a lark. The idea of McAfee's Global SPAM (for Spammed Persistently All Month) Experiment — which fittingly started on April Fool's Day — was to have 50 volunteers from 10 different countries answer every spam message and click on every pop-up ad on their PCs.

John Mullan on the use of explanation as a device in Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory (via)

Wood density explains sound quality of great master violins The advantage of using medical equipment to study classical musical instruments has been proven by a Dutch researcher from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). In collaboration with a renowned luthier, Dr. Berend Stoel put classical violins, including several made by Stradivarius, in a CT scanner. The results are published in the July 2 issue of the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE. The homogeneity in the densities of the wood from which the classical violins are made, in marked contrast to the modern violins studied, may very well explain their superior sound production.

Random live webcams from the Net (via)

Word Spy: Asian paradox n. The lower than average rate of cardiovascular disease and cancer among Asian people despite a higher than average rate of cigarette smoking.

stray bullets

Big one today.

Pentagon Spy: Terrorists Ready to Launch Satellite Strikes by 2020 What it should have been called was: China pretty much capable of launching satellite strike right now. My favorite part: Take, for instance, the Defense Department's accusation that Beijing has "developed and tested an ASAT system described as a 'parasitic microsatellite'" - a tiny machine that would attach itself to American orbiters, for nefarious purposes. The claim, which first appeared in the 2003 edition of the Pentagon's annual “Chinese Military Power" (CMP) report, came from a Hong Kong newspaper, and was repeated in several editions. Experts guffawed at the suggestion.

Stakeouts, Lucky Breaks Snare Six More in Citibank ATM Heist The FBI has recently made at least six more arrests in New York -- bringing the total to 10 -- thanks to information from arrested scam suspects, a lucky traffic stop, and an undercover operation that at one point had Eastern European hackers chasing a female FBI agent through the streets of New York, trying to mug her for ATM-card-programming gear.

The Web Time Forgot In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.” (via)

Eyeing tourism, Haiti battles its violent reputation "It's a big myth," says Fred Blaise, spokesman for the UN police force in Haiti. "Port-au-Prince is no more dangerous than any big city. You can go to New York and get pickpocketed and held at gunpoint. The same goes for cities in Mexico or Brazil." Eye opener (via)

How Russian Scientists Kept a Dog’s Severed Head Alive! So wrong. Highly disturbing whether true or not. Video and everything. Environmental Graffiti is no namby-pamby outfit. They post some pretty hardcore stuff.

George Carlin's Last Interview Long interview and it's just the highlights! One of the most extensive interviews I've read. My arm is getting tired here. The crook of my arm. (via)

Maryland plantation attic holds 400 years of documents For four centuries, they were the ultimate pack rats. Now a Maryland family's massive collection of letters, maps and printed bills has surfaced in the attic of a former plantation, providing a firsthand account of life from the 1660s through World War II. (via)

Could treasure hunters have discovered "Nazi Gold"? A recent discovery has renewed world interest in the quest. Have treasure hunters really discovered the famed Nazi gold stash? Some say they have. Some even say they've found the Amber Room.

Shaolin Temple wants to sell its secret Today's Southern Metropolis Daily has an article reporting that Shaolin is now selling a series of books called"Shaolin Kung Fu and Medicine Secret" (少林武功医宗秘笈) for 9,990 yuan a set on its online store, "Shaolin Stage of Joy". I'll hold out for the Shaolin Buddha Finger.

Preserving Your Personal Digital Archives While there is, as of yet, no hard guarantee that your family photos will be around 10,000 years from now, there are a few things that you can do to keep them around long enough for the next generation to enjoy and pass on. We have some basic tips for keeping your personal digital data alive and kicking through your lifetime, and if you want to shoot for the ten thousand year mark, these tips can get you headed in that direction, too. It stands to reason that the Long Now people are as good a source as any for this type on info.

The Wizard of Mauritius An enticing mystery.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (via)

stray bullets

Cannibal mum fed son's flesh to relatives... bizarre and disturbing; A Jura F90 Coffee Machine can be hacked remotely over the Internet (via); It appears that elusive felines are behind a new bridge being built between two hostile governments. The governments, you ask? That would be Iran and the USA; and, a Palm Frond Used As Weapon In 'Most Bizarre' Central Fla. Store Robbery (via)

Lagniappe: Listen to or download the full audio from the rare LP record First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival, 1979 (via)