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Top NSA Scribe Takes Us Inside The Shadow Factory No outsider has spent more time tracking the labyrinthine ways of the National Security Agency than James Bamford. But even he gets lost in the maze. Despite countless articles and three books on the U.S. government's super-secret, signals-intelligence service — the latest of which, The Shadow Factory, is out today — Bamford tells Danger Room that he was caught off guard by revelations that the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans. He remains confused about how the country's telecommunications firms were co-opted into the warrantless spying project. And he's still only guessing, he admits, at the breadth and depth of those domestic surveillance efforts. In this exclusive interview, Bamford talks about how hard it is, after all these years, to fit together the pieces at the NSA's "Puzzle Palace" headquarters.

The Programming Aphorisms of Strunk and White If I could take ten software development books to a desert island, The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White would be one of them. (via)

Making A Living From Music For Picture Writing music for picture seems like the ideal career. You get to work in your studio for a living, you can earn good money, and there's so much potential work: action films, travel and nature documentaries, romantic comedies, cartoons, low-budget sci-fi, even breakfast cereal ads. But how do you break into this lucrative world? As we find out in the first part of this new series, the first thing you need is determination... (links to pts. 2-9) (via)

Talk to Elbot I did. For way too long. It was interesting, but I could tell it wasn't human, although I was probably biased because I already knew. It was a decent conversation and was quite funny at times. Elbot can be a bit of a wise-ass. (prev)

also:
New audio tapes of JFK released (via)
World Chess Championship 2008 (wiki) (more)
Searching for Robert Johnson (third photo?)
Project 10^100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible (Google is giving out 10 million for the best ideas, deadline Oct. 20)
Invention: Natural colour underwater photographs
Sleep-deprivation is a myth, expert claims
How to Survive a Grizzly Bear Attack
The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan (via)

viddy:
Photojournalist on the frontline
Inside The Actor's Studio: Dennis Hopper (1994)
Fernando Botero Interview 1/2 2/2 (prev)
Márta Sebestyén and the Sebő Ensemble: Sándor Weöres poems (lovely)
Hairyman (animated interpretation of an African-American folk tale from the South)
Do you know the first ten elements of the periodic table?
Gijs Gieskes beautiful spinning photoelectronic acid machine (synthporn)
Zombie Robots!

Vitajex (A Face in the Crowd)

(video link)

Elia Kazan's 1957 film, A Face in the Crowd explores the arc of media sensation; a trajectory which usually consists of a spike, a (brief) plateau, a descent and a dead drop-- a fall that can pass beyond the zero into the terrain of derision and antipathy. Some manage to jump off the track and find a way to sustain a career of some sort, most seem to burn out, walk away or get booed off the stage.

The cultural references in this film might be lost on some, but the presented themes are eternal and recognizable. One can easily see parallels with the emergence of the media darling, the one-hit wonder and the pop-culture amateurs of Reality Television and the Internet.

Fame, with a capital F, is one of the true enigmas of modern life. Along with the stable of entertainers, public figures and athletes that dominate the halls of Fame, there is an odd branch of the family that consists of a varying assortment of precocious kids, criminals, dead people, hayseed pundits, photogenic victims, average Joes and Joans and outright freaks. These people are the most vulnerable to public opinion. The masses can be merciless and often turn on them, if given proper opportunity. (Even though it's almost certain you will know exactly what I'm saying, this is nothing new, the exact nature of the public and why we act and react the way we do remains at the root of this enigma. Who could have predicted Star Wars Kid?)

Despite director Kazan's capable orchestration of a sprawling ensemble cast, Andy Griffith runs off and shreds his way through the story. He cuts quite a different cast than he did as the sedate and friendly Sheriff Andy Taylor. He almost overshadows the entire film. (I mean that in a good way.)

The production is beautifully supported by the set design, sound and cinematography. It's full of samples, sound-bites and imagery that borders on the surreal, in and out of context. This film is imminently mashable.

It's worth putting in the queue. (Or, you can watch it online via the video link.)

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Can’t See the Forest for the Trees But as she drove around the country, Hecht noticed plenty of trees. Some were remnants of old forests, but she also saw hedgerows, backyard orchards, coffee groves, trees growing along rivers and streams, cashew and palm plantations, saplings sprouting in abandoned fields, and heavily wooded grassland. Almost every village abounded with trees—“like a big jungle forest,” she said. Rather than no trees, she saw them everywhere. Nature was far from extinguished; it was thriving. Re-evaluating the 'myth of the pristine forest', it seems that humans have been shaping them for quite some time. (via)

As SLow aS Possible Fair warning for long-term music lovers: the world’s slowest concert, a 639-year organ piece by American avant-garde composer John Cage (01912-01992), will next change notes in just over a month’s time, on 5 November 02008. (with video of the last change, this past July)

Indigenous Media Because I do Internet and Indigenous/Grassroot identity I am occasionally asked “what do you know about Indigenous people on the Internet or on other media?” The answer is: I don’t usually mix these two. However in the name of developing some competence here are a few links...

also:
Thomas Pynchon’s next book (can't wait)
Ancient Peru Pyramid Spotted by Satellite
Man reads entire Oxford English Dictionary
100 Skills Every Man Should Know (girls, too)
10 High Paying Dirty Jobs

viddy:
High-speed (super slow motion) Video Clips (loads)
Sam and Dave interview - 1967
1977 CBC Interview with Marshal McLuhan

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Lift could take passengers straight into space Japanese scientists are attempting to build a lift (elevator for us Americans) that will take passengers 62,000 miles into space.

MI6 agent's cover slips during BBC interview In his dangerous job the MI6 spy's identity needs to remain a closely guarded secret. So you can imagine his surprise when, during an interview with the national broadcaster, his carefully chosen disguise of a fake moustache failed him spectacularly.

Blogging about blogging What do young people think about blogging? Let’s have a look; here’s what one 18 year old has to say. This one happens to be my son, but I don’t think that prevents him from representing his generation: ‘People no longer are just able to blog, but blogging is increasingly becoming accepted as a legitimate medium of information; albeit quite different to others. At the cost of the credibility associated with major news services and other more traditional ways of getting our information, a whole new world is opened up- of personal opinion, a perspective into the lives and experiences of others and original creativity. When subjective experience and opinion is sought over objective fact, blogging becomes a medium very difficult to beat.’ Blogging is passé? I suspect that many of the old-timers have become a bit tired and unimaginative-- it's just getting started. (Let's encourage young bloggers instead of greeting them with statements like "Blogging is dead")

Ike Really Tore Up Louisville You will find a collection of pictures I took after the storm here. Unfortunately, some streets still look like this a week later. Though we got electricity back about 12 hours after it went out, most houses and businesses around us are still dark. LG&E, our local utility, has been saying it may be another week before all power is restored.

Au revoir to cool hand Luc Besson Luc Besson is in denial. The 49-year-old French film potentate and master of pop cinema (see Nikita, Léon, The Big Blue) has made yet another peerless action classic in the Paris-set kidnap drama Taken. Written and produced by Besson, it stars Liam Neeson as a semi-retired CIA hatchet man who will stop at nothing to bring his missing daughter back home, and send her captors to hell. It is directed by Besson’s former Steadicam operator Pierre Morel, but with its luxurious mix of slick style, emotional melodrama and bone-crunching thrills, it’s got Besson’s fingerprints all over it.

Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof On a hillside overlooking this college town on the banks of the Hudson, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has erected a technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses. Eight years and $200 million in the making, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or Empac, resembles an enormous 1950s-era television set. But inside are not old-fashioned vacuum tubes but the stuff of 21st-century high-tech dreams dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before, its creators say — 220,000 square feet of theaters, studios and work spaces hooked to supercomputers.

TinEye is an image search engine. Search the web for images using an image. Finally! It's still getting its legs-- a lot of images are still not indexed and it's difficult to find an original source, but this is certainly a start. (via)

PSYOPS merchandise

PSYOP merchandise

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Gustav holdouts' tales give evacuees pause After curfew on Wednesday night, two National Guard soldiers traded their rifles for a guitar and some drumsticks....The night after Gustav came ashore, small squads of storm holdouts and National Guardsmen played an elaborate game of curfew cat-and-mouse. But they finally gave up as everyone ended up at the Maple Leaf lounge for a late-night gab session. (via)

The secret code of diaries A sampling of the more daunting diary codes, some taking many years to crack. (via) also: A high school teacher in Salinas, Donald G. Harden, and his wife cracked a code of a man threatening mass murder, a code which the Navy and FBI experts have failed to break in a week of effort. (read more and see the cracked message)

Elderly are more open-minded than young people People become confused more easily as they age because they succumb to distractions and not due to their brains slowing down, a new study shows.

Finding L.A.'s hidden homeless To most people, it's just trash: A scrap of dirty blanket visible under some stairs. A glimpse of blue tarp peeking out of a bush. A bag of recyclables parked discreetly behind a concrete column. But Courtney Kanagi, an outreach worker, has learned how to decode bits of urban detritus that most people ignore. She knows what these signs mean: the crawl space beneath the stairs was someone's home. When you're out there, you're acutely aware of many things that others miss completely, never noticing. (via)

Let's hear it for the autodidact Sean Connery's memoir is surprising, not least because the actor emerges from its thoughtful pages as self-taught.

also:
MIT-led Team Zooms in on Massive Black Hole at Center of Milky Way
Bare-breasted virgins compete for Swaziland king (photos!)
How to Create the Perfect Fake Identity
Archaeological Excavation Techniques
ClichéWatch: i.love.the.smell.of.*.in.the.morning (funny) (via)

viddy:
USCG Fly Over of New Orleans Post Gustav
Terry Gilliam on the Work of Roland Emmerich
Marshall McLuhan on the Today show (don't miss it)

CNN Concentrated (2002)

Welcome to the New Flesh.

Omer Fast
2008 Whitney Biennial: Omer Fast

via The Triumph of Bullshit

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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!

Sending and Receiving

The first radio lecture being delivered by radio from Tufts University, 1922.

tout-fait (The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal):

Everything that we call electronic mass media today begins with the sending and receiving of signals without any material connection, with the miracle of "wireless" that started shortly before 1900. From 1920 on, this transmission technique of then primarily strategic military use develops into radio broadcasting. As a result, material things disappear from mass distribution and the media turn into something "immaterial". The uniformity of all products for all people caused by industrialization - as is expressed by the lexical term "ready made" - is only a preliminary stage towards a globally synchronized perception of a "radio-made" experience world.

This is one of the best articles I've read all year. If you're a fan or student of radio, media, communication, the Internet, hacking, the occult, Duchamp, Cage, Baudelaire or Baudrillard, do not miss it. Although it dates back to 2000, it is no less relevant to the present day.

via :::wood s lot:::

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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)

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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)

Rewind Museum

Get your retro-electronic geek on with the Rewind Museum, a collection of images and info on obsolete tech from gramophones to old-timey televisions to brick cell-phones.

via The Presurfer

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Why Do You Lie? The Perils of Self-Reporting (everybody lies everyday... mostly at work.)

Potential Plowshare: The 'Magnetic Audio Device' Weapon: A high-powered Magnetic Audio Device that was designed as a non-lethal weapon might have music-related uses, after a demonstration revealed that the music of Queen and Frank Sinatra sounded decent at distances of up to one mile away. Soon: DARPA hits the brown note at Coachella

Practice in front of a bush: Captain Beefheart's rules for guitarists: 1. LISTEN TO THE BIRDS That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere. thanx, Crow

A Goya Tour of Madrid: Hear about the hidden gems of the Spanish master, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, in the city where he lived and worked (via)

Neave Television ...telly without context. I kept expecting something horrible to happen. A bit unnerving but I had to pull myself away. I can't be responsible for any trauma you might sustain from watching this. Lots of other goodies on the main site. (via)

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Shortsighted Statecraft: Washington's Muddled Middle East Policy (worthwhile); Journalist 'reported own murders' Police in Macedonia have arrested a journalist on suspicion that he is behind three murders he reported on. (via); Senor Coconut Takes Listeners Around The World

Moodstream by Getty Images (I'm still getting a feel for this, let me know how you like it) (via)

Moodstream is a powerful brainstorming tool designed to help take you in inspiring, unexprected directions. Whether you want images, footage or audio, or just need a stream of fresh ideas, tweak the Moodstream sliders to bring a whole new creative palette straight to you.

Have a marvelous summer Sunday

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The U.K. bans product placement on TV, hopefully a trend (via); Wired Science asks, Would You Smoke Genetically Modified Marijuana?; just don't smoke any before you read The Art of Simplexity (via); though if you insist, you can zone out on some European Film Treasures (via); but if you really want to go deep, check out Jahsonic's mind-blowing Art and Popular Culture Wiki, good for you.

Links 5-21-08

Marshall McLuhan, the Man and his Message

"One day people will learn via an electronic circuitry system..."

The CBC Digital Archives offers 9 radio and 9 TV clips of Marshall McLuhan, the man that coined the term global village, predicted the internet, and even hinted at Web 2.0 and crowdsourcing.

via The Huge Entity
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Each Grain of Sand a Tiny Work of Art

What does sand look like up close? It's really quite astonishing, actually.
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The 9 Most Devastating Insults From Around the World

Suck butter from my ass is fightin' words where I come from.

hat tip: My 2 Second Shelf Life
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Subliminal McCain in Fox 5 Logo?

fliesinthek:

It's undetectable at normal speed, but I was editing this footage in Final Cut Pro and going through it frame-by-frame when I saw this.




Is this for real?

Update: I just took a look at her blog and I can detect no shenanigans.

via disinfo.com