The man who survived both atomic bombs

BBC - Man survived both atomic bombings:

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on 6 August 1945 when a US plane dropped the first atomic bomb.

He suffered serious burns and spent a night there before returning to his home city of Nagasaki just before it was bombed on 9 August.

Is this good luck or bad luck?

People of Chernobyl

(video link)

Serge Van Cauwenbergh:

In 2006, 20 years after the nuclear disaster, I visited the Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl. I also visited elderly inhabitants of Chernobyl. This is my photographic testimony of those visits.

via Chernobyl and Eastern Europe

How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb

Cameramen photograph shot of Grable at the Nevada Test Site, May 25, 1953

Images from How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb
How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb

via The World's Fair

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Getting A Story Made at National Geographic After talking with several National Geographic photographers about shooting for the magazine I became intrigued with the process of getting a story made. The collaboration between the photo editors and photographers and then the photographers involvement in all the steps along the way is unique and important to how they make stories. More magazines should spend this kind of time with their contributors. The few times I’ve had photographer come into the office and present their images to us have been incredibly rewarding and certainly I think made the story that much better. I asked David Griffin, National Geographic’s Director of Photography about the process of getting stories made and the rumored years it takes for a story to go from idea to printed page... (via)

Jacking into the Brain--Is the Brain the Ultimate Computer Interface? How far can science advance brain-machine interface technology? Will we one day pipe the latest blog entry or NASCAR highlights directly into the human brain as if the organ were an outsize flash drive?

From Silver Lake to Suicide: One Family's Secret History of the Jonestown Massacre A cache of letters hidden in the basement brings to life a house, a family and the tragedy that would change everything (via)

Love story: The librarian, the postal worker and their art Art takes up all the air in Herb and Dorothy Vogel's cramped one-bedroom on the Upper East Side. Minimalist and conceptual works cover every inch of wall and dangle from the ceiling. Because there is no other place for it, a Richard Tuttle painting clings to the inside of a louvered door that leads to the tiny kitchen. Other pieces crowd shelves and table tops. And the Vogels, who are giving the Miami Art Museum and 49 other institutions around the country gifts of 50 artworks each and are subjects of a documentary that will screen in December during Art Basel Miami Beach, say there is plenty more under the bed and jammed into the closets of this modest, rent-stabilized space they have called home since 1963.

Library Ghosts: Northeastern U.S. Last year about this time (just in time for Halloween), I posted on this blog a list of libraries that are said to be haunted. Now the library ghosts are back, by popular demand...

also:
Stanislav Petrov, the man who could have started a nuclear war, but didn’t (via)
Know Your Intelligence Agencies: National Reconnaissance Office
Biology in Science Fiction: Erasing Memory
The History of Some of Today's Most Common Phrases (via)
Recent additions to the Chambers Slang Dictionary
Punctuation Game
1000 artworks to see before you die (via)
Podcasts from the University of Oxford (via)
Haruki Murakami interview (via)
Wayne Coyne interview
Aerial Phenomena Research: Selected Papers - Jacques F. Vallee (via)
Casting the Runes by M.R. James
Oboe Bong

Futility Closet: Over the Moon Jules Verne earned his title as the father of science fiction. His 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon contains eerie similarities to the Apollo program that unfolded a century later. (read more)

viddy:
The Anti-Fascist trailer
Parallel Universes, Parallel Lives 1/6 (Eels frontman Mark Everett in search of his father's brain. Dr Hugh Everett III proposed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics.) (via)
Hog Hunting (A plague of feral hogs has descended on the American South. They've been spotted here in Savannah.) (via)
The Real Secret Of The Matrix: The Haunting Sound Of The Waterphone (You'll know it as soon as you hear it.)
Daily (kinda sorta) Weather with David Lynch (via)
Angkor Wat, Cambodia (1930s newsreel)

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At Home With Wayne Coyne
When trees grew in Antarctica (via)
Emily Dickinson's Secret Lover! (via)
Historical Fiction for Teenage Girls
Historical Fiction for Teens
Create your own search engine
FM 100-30 Nuclear Operations (via)
Make Your Own Hard Cider (via)

viddy:
Daedelus Talks Vinyl And Culture (crate-digging)
Jack Kerouac - American Haikus
Laptop Orchestra
Che - Steven Soderbergh @ NYFF Q&A
How cocaine is made
Motoman: Robot Bartender

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Right Thing to Wear at the Wrong End of a Gun There are bulletproof leather jackets and bulletproof polo shirts. Armored guayabera shirts hang next to protective windbreakers, parkas and even white ruffled tuxedo shirts. Every member of the sales staff has had to take a turn being shot while wearing one of the products, which range from a few hundred dollars to as much as $7,000, so they can attest to the efficacy of the secret fabric.

also:
Was Life on Mars Extinguished Prematurely by a Huge Impact? (via)
Man of steel (rare Richard Serra interview)
Liveblogging a pending asteroid strike

Futility Closet - Allied Reptiles In February 1945, the British 14th Army had surrounded a mass of fleeing Japanese in a mangrove swamp in southern Burma. In the swamp were thousands of saltwater crocodiles, averaging 15 feet long, but the Japanese refused to surrender...

viddy:
Kraftwerk - Radioactivity (live)
Video Inside the Chernobyl Sarcophagus
Jack Kerouac reads from Doctor Sax in 1961
The Weather Underground (feature length doc)

Nuclear Emergency Response

Livermore’s nuclear emergency response capabilities were tested in Operation Morning Light in 1978.

from: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories Science & Technology Review

Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST)
How Nuclear Detectives Work

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Baseball's UK heritage confirmed A diary that documents a game being played in Guildford in 1755 has been verified by Surrey History Centre. William Bray, a Surrey diarist and historian from Shere, wrote about the game when he was still a teenager. Major League Baseball, the governing body of the game in the US, has been informed of the discovery. (via)

Baang You're Dead Lee had recently quit his job in order to spend more time playing games, presumably so that he could eventually "go pro" and compete in South Korea's popular gaming competitions. It was a life choice that would ultimately prove fatal. Armed with cheap and fast connections and the latest gear, some South Koreans are gaming themselves to death. (thx Nick)

The last shot of the American Civil War was fired.... in the Arctic, off the coast of Alaska!

also:
100 Free Online Ivy League Courses You Should Take Just for Fun (via)
SnowCrystals.com Your online guide to snowflakes, snow crystals, and other ice phenomena (exhaustive)
Man Killed By Exploding Lava Lamp (via)

viddy:
Meatarians train plants to eat burgers
Rupert Sheldrake - The Extended Mind: Recent Experimental Evidence (via)
Brewster Kahle on the need for a digital library 'free for the world'
How to survive a nuclear attack (don't miss it)
Howard Rheingold on collaboration (I don't link frequently to Smart Mobs, but I keep and eye on it. Stick with this one, it's good.) (via)

Unnecessary Knowledge: Every year approximately 2,500 left-handed people are killed by using object or machinery designed for right-handed people. If you're left-handed and work with tools or machinery, you become aware of this possibility. In many cases, you become right-handed. (via)

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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)

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Deep in the radioactive bowels of the smashed Chernobyl reactor, a strange new lifeform is blooming Ever since, a 30 km 'exclusion zone' has existed around the contaminated site, accessible to those with special clearance only. It's quite easy, then, to conjure an apocalyptic vision of the area; to imagine an eerily deserted wasteland, utterly devoid of life. But the truth is quite the opposite. The exclusion zone is teeming with wildlife of all shapes and sizes, flourishing unhindered by human interference and seemingly unfazed by the ever-present radiation. Most remarkable, however, is not the life buzzing around the site, but what's blooming inside the perilous depths of the reactor. (via)

Global Trail of an Online Crime Ring As an international ring of thieves plundered the credit card numbers of millions of Americans, investigators struggled to figure out who was orchestrating the crimes in the United States. When prosecutors unveiled indictments last week, they made a stunning admission: the culprit was, they said, their very own informant.

Unabomber objects to cabin display at Newseum Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski wrote a letter to a federal appeals court complaining about a museum exhibit of the tiny cabin where he plotted an 18-year bombing spree. Kaczynski, who is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole, says the display at the Newseum in Washington runs counter to his victims' wish to limit further publicity about the case. (see the letter) (via)

FBI seeks owners of stolen art after collector dies When New York art collector William Kingsland died in 2006, he left behind hundreds of works of art. But some, including works by Pablo Picasso, turned out to have been stolen.

Is 'gene doping' the next Olympic threat? Could this be the first Olympics in which athletes are discovered altering their own DNA?

In search of Western civilisation's lost classics The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its long-held secrets (via)

also:
Photography Bans (what will they do when we have cameras in our heads?)
The Agritopia Project is an effort to design and build a neighborly community around an urban farm. (via)
Old Computers Recycled to Make Construction Material
Watchmen: The Movie Blog - A Mysterious Discovery in New York
Carl Craig Gets an Orchestra
Should You Worry About Digital Drugs?
Is the New Bernie Mac & Samuel L. Vehicle Cursed?
Update from the Samorost world (games)
Public Computer Errors pool (via)
Bugs made from found objects (via)
Cat butt menagerie
Cat Butt Museum (via)

Atomic Wednesday: Project: Upshot Knothole

viddy:
Q-Tip works the turntables
Tommy James and the Shondells - Cellophane Symphony
Robert Anton Wilson - Maybe Logic

63 years ago today....

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Let it be the last.

ht: this isn't happiness

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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.

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Nukes Are Not the Best Way to Stop an Asteroid Although Schweickart has a great deal of faith in the agency, enough to risk his life piloting their lunar lander, he feels that they issued the misleading statement -- under immense political pressure. It was a nefarious excuse to put nuclear weapons in space.

Adventurer Steve Fossett 'may have faked his own death' "I've been doing this search and rescue for 14 years. Fossett should have been found.... "It's not like we didn't have our eyes open. We found six other planes while we were looking for him. We're pretty good at what we do." (via)

Headline of the Day: Human sperm from dental pulp via mouse testicles

Despite pain, woman believes in better days thanks to 'X-Files' Rock on, Kathy Green. (via)

Her Own Society A new reading of Emily Dickinson.

also:
"Comments on Comments" (a must)
Does everyone have claustrophobia?
Schneier Interviewed by RU Sirius (transcript) (via)
RU Sirius banned from Facebook for using a pseudonym (via)
Tomb reveals ancient trade network (via)
Smithsonian Podcasts (wow) (via)
Medpedia (via) (via)
Twitter me Ishmael Starting today, this Twitter account will post one paragraph from Moby-Dick every hour from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

viddy:
Last.fm + YouTube = music tv goodness (via)
Joel Hodgson's Jollyfilter Test Video proof of concept is sound (via) (via)
Hans Richter - Vormittagsspuk (1928) The nazis destroyed the sound version of this film as "degenerate art".

Of course unmoderated anonymous comments on the internet can be incomprehensibly awful and frustratingly stupid. They can also be heartbreakingly sincere and shatteringly honest. That’s because they’re written by real people, and real people are complicated, messy, and weird. -- Derek Powazek (via) (good one, Guy)

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Ebola-like virus returns to Europe after 40 years Marburg is back. (via)

Why Microwave Auditory Effect Crowd-Control Gun Won't Work Experts say you'd fry before you heard anything (via)

Look At the State You’re In: Absaroka In its short-lived attempt at existence, the US state of Absaroka (pronounced ab-SOR-ka) managed to acquire quite a few trappings of statehood: a governor and capital were selected, Absarokan car license plates issued, and there even was a Miss Absaroka 1939 (the first and only one).

Exit Unusual methods adopted by suicide victims, compiled by George Kennan for a report in McClure's Magazine, 1908. Hugging red-hot stoves? You will certainly twist and shout your way through this list from the incredible Futility Closet.

also:
Savannah River Site Eyeball
Interesting Tricks of the Body
Unnecessary Knowledge

viddy:
Epic 2015 The state of the online world in 2015. (via)
In hiding for exposing Tanzania witchdoctors I am living in hiding after I received threats because of my undercover work exposing the threat from witchdoctors to albinos living in Tanzania. (via)
Late George Carlin Interview Good. Don't miss it.
bleep vs blorf. 4 out of 5 children can’t tell bleep from blorf. (via)

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George W. Bush: "Awesome!" The president has used "awesome" to describe everything from dead soldiers to the pope. How did a slang word trickle up to the highest office in the land? Let's bring back splendid! I maintain that there is something euphonius in the phonetics of words like awesome, especially curse-words, that is satisfying in a more physical rather than cognitive way. There is always something viscerally appealing in the heartily exclaimed shit, motherfucker or cocksucker. Also, have you ever noticed that expletives rarely go out of style? (via)

'Wizard of Oz' Storm Makes Pigs Fly "The wind picked her about 2½ feet up off the ground — she was swimming like her feet in the air — and it took her about 50 feet or 60 feet around the corner and must have slammed her into the fence, and then she came running back..."

Man With No Arms, Legs Takes Part In Triathlon Wow.

You've got me under your skin Reading fiction is good for us, Liam Durcan says, not because it teaches life lessons, but because it immerses us in other minds and other experiences (via)

also:
Artifacts from the Future (all of the now discontinued Found images from Wired)
8 Insane Nuclear Explosions (via)
10 More Unsolved Mysteries of the World
Gillian Anderson Interview
Q&A: Chris Carter
Words Of Wisdom From Tom Waits (via)
Worlds largest selection of Turntables (via)
Convert Your Basement Into A Subwoofer (via)

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A quarter of planet to be online by 2012, and able to understand each's other's language

New Chernobyl Video Report

When Spies Don’t Play Well With Their Allies As they complete their training at “The Farm,” the Central Intelligence Agency’s base in the Virginia tidewater, young agency recruits are taught a lesson they are expected never to forget during assignments overseas: there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service.... But most C.I.A. veterans agree that no relationship between the spy agency and a foreign intelligence service is quite as byzantine, or as maddening, as that between the C.I.A. and Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I. (via)

Britain on alert for deadly new knife with exploding tip that freezes victims' organs It's for real, and I'd wager that sales are exploding. (via)

Lost in Space There are those who believe that somewhere in the vast blackness of space, about nine billion miles from the Sun, the first human is about to cross the boundary of our Solar System into interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at –270 degrees C (–454ºF); his tiny capsule has been silently sailing away from the Earth at 18,000 mph (29,000km/h) for the last 45 years. He is the original lost cosmonaut, whose rocket went up and, instead of coming back down, just kept on going. (via)

5 Ways Travelers Can Avoid Being Caught With Drugs Many foreigners arrested on drug charges believe they were wrongly convicted. Learn how you can avoid being a victim.

The Scrotal Radiendocrinator

From the always excellent Environmental Graffiti:

The Radiendocrinator was intended to be placed over the endocrine glands to invigorate sexual virility and consisted of seven radium soaked pieces of paper, about the size and shape of a credit card, covered with a thin piece of clear plastic and two gold-wire screens. Men were advised to place the instrument under the scrotum at night like an ‘athletic strap’. The inventor of the Radiendocrinator (and Radithor), William J. Bailey, had so much faith in his products he claimed not only that he regularly used them, but that he had drunk more radium water than any living man - he died in 1949 of bladder cancer.

10 Radioactive Products That People Actually Used

Readings 5-14-08

Security Flaws Exposed at Nuke Lab

One night several weeks ago, according to TIME's sources, a commando team posing as terrorists attacked and penetrated the lab, quickly overpowering its defenses to reach its "objective" — a mock payload of fissile material. The exercise highlighted a number of serious security shortcomings at Livermore, sources say, including the failure of a hydraulic system essential to operating an extremely lethal Gatling gun that protects the facility.

It gets better:

According to a former senior officer familiar with the details of security at Livermore, simulated attacks are staged approximately every 12 months. The attack team's objective is usually to penetrate the "Superblock," after which the attackers are timed to determine whether they can hold their ground long enough to construct a crude "dirty bomb" that could, in theory, be detonated immediately, or can buy themselves enough time to fabricate a rudimentary nuclear device, approximating the destructive power of the low-yield weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A third option in the simulation is for the attackers to abscond with the nuclear material into the heavily populated San Francisco Bay area.

Why, you ask? Well, what puzzles me is that if they do these exercises every 12 months, why the hell aren't the people at Livermore a little bit better prepared?
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Public Invited to Search for Mars Polar Lander Crash Site

Does that mean I get to go to Mars?

But seriously,

If you had a screen that could show 1,000 pixels by 1,000 pixels, you would need to look at 1,600 screen shots to cover just one of the 18 photos. Sounds like a perfect job for crowd sourcing! Enter a cadre of eager Martian explorers and bam! Within a few days there are already people posting pixel coordinates of interesting finds.

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Arms Race in Space

It's on. It's expensive. And it could destabilize the world...

The United States has been quietly working on implementing this vision. Space weaponization is a relatively long-term project that is expected to culminate by 2030. But the pace seems to be quickening. The Pentagon has produced a series of doctrinal documents that clarify what is meant by war in space and how it is to be properly waged.

I've always suspected that this was so. I don't think Star Wars was ever really shut down, it was modified and expanded and now works under an assumed identity.

via media underground
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15 Infamous Top Secret Bases & Compounds From Around The World

Have you ever wondered where the government stores its most precious documents and artifacts, or where they process top secret information and carry out military attacks on the enemy? This is a list of 15 of the most secret and secure facilities on the planet, many of which you probably have never even heard of because their locations are classified. Many of these secret bases are hidden beneath the ground, inside of a mountain or located in the middle of nowhere, so it is difficult to establish exact information on them. However, it is intriguing to get a glimpse into these hidden and murky worlds, even if it is only from the outside.

Including old favorites like Iron Mountain and Menwith Hill, this list is couched more in the actual as opposed to the speculative, so you won't find Area 51, Dulce or Montauk here.

via Media Digest
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Everyone in favor, say yargh!

AS A CHILD, Peter Leeson was pirate-obsessed. He cherished the ruby-eyed skull ring he got at Disney World, after riding Pirates of the Caribbean. He took up a collection of coconut pirate heads. He lapped up the pirate themes in "Goonies." And when he grew up to be an economics professor, and started studying pirate society, he found a new excuse for admiration. Pirates, it turns out, were pioneers of democracy.

William S. Burroughs introduced me to this idea with his story of Captain Mission in his masterpiece, Cities of the Red Night. Granted, Burroughs had his own weird-ass spin on things, but the basics were there.

Captain Francois Mission was a French pirate that reportedly founded a free colony in Madagascar that embraced democratic and egalitarian principles. This colony, or "pirate utopia" was known as Libertatia, its motto: "for God and liberty." They waged war against states and lawmakers, attacking their ships, sparing prisoners, and freeing slaves. They called themselves Liberi, and lived under a communal rule, a sort of worker owned corporation of piracy. They were governed by "the Articles" (shared codes of conduct), and they elected their leaders and delegates.

Some 25 years after the establishment of the colony, they were wiped out by native tribesmen and Libertatia and ultimately all pirate utopias were forgotten. There is no back reference to pirate democracies by the Founding Fathers of the U.S.

More on Burroughs and Mission here and here.

Daniel Defoe. pseudonymously as Captain Charles Johnson, wrote Of Captain Mission, which many now maintain is a work of fiction and allegory.

via Marginal Revolution
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ends

Readings 5-12-08

A few items from late last week you might have missed.

Averting "inadvertent" nuclear war

Do you know about this? On Nov. 22, Thanksgiving Day, 2007, two U.S. jets were scrambled from the 90^th Fighter Squadron at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska to intercept two Russian long-range "strategic" bombers (strategic being a euphemism for nuclear-capable) in the skies over the Aleutian Islands as the bombers approached Alaskan air space.

Yeah, Russia is flexing again. Is it to send a message to the world, especially China and the U.S., or is it directed more toward the inside, to let everyone know who's in charge, or both?

This sort of brinksmanship has unearthed old fears of accidental nuclear exchange. In light of recent news, this is certainly a cause for concern.

One thing one should keep in mind: My sources tell me that, despite current problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rest of the world, most notably Russia and China were quite whelmed, in fact, scared shitless by our display of military might during both Gulf Wars. Both countries are also aware that we did this with a relatively small professional force with a considerable amount of popular dissent, most notably in GWII. They are spending a lot of time and energy working out how to deal with the U.S. military.

Of course, there's a very good chance that the Russian over-flights are merely acts of game-piecing, designed to get everyone all worked up and see how they react. Perhaps because of the unpopularity of the wars we're in and the dissatisfaction with the outgoing administration as well as the dip in the economy has prompted a test of resolve or an end run in a political football game. It's a game that seems to have a lot of people nervous, and justifiably so in the face of a potential "accidental" nuclear exchange. (I'd wager that these exercises serve a multiplicity of purposes, internal, external, political and strategic alike.)

One quote in the Slate article grabbed me. This is from Bruce Blair's paper presented at the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament in Oslo:

"The nuclear command systems today operate in an intense information battleground," Blair wrote, "on which more than 20 nations including Russia, China, and North Korea have developed dedicated computer attack programs. These programs deploy viruses to disable, confuse, and delay nuclear command and warning processes in other nations. At the brink of conflict, nuclear command and warning networks around the world may be besieged by electronic intruders whose onslaught degrades the coherence and rationality of nuclear decision-making. The potential for perverse consequences with computer-launched weapons on hair-trigger is clear."

I'm just a layman in this regard, but as laypeople, we should strive to become informed citizens. An informed citizenry is one of the key components of any democracy. Well, the informed citizen in me is mystified by the fact that humans are still strategizing nuclear war. Call me naive, but I think we really need to get past this. This statement may be a simplistic emphasis of the obvious, but it's a point that needs to be hammered on as long as it takes. I don't hold out hope that we'll stop shooting each other any time soon, but the nuclear option is just not an option.
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Russians to operate computers by power of thought

Bear in mind that this story is from Pravda, a publication closer to the Weekly World News than the New York Times, and also that the Washington Post has shuffled the story off to their Off Beat column, but I though it brought some things up that deserved some consideration.

First, it seemed odd to me that the writer of the Pravda story didn't seem to know that people are already doing this and are pretty well along in the process.

Secondly, and a bit obliquely, there's an old saw that makes the rounds among space buffs that the Americans spent a million dollars to make a pens that works in space, the Soviets used pencils. This may or may not be a myth, but the message is implicit. 750,000 dollars doesn't seem like a lot for this kind of research.

With that in mind, it will be interesting to see what they come up with considering their reputation for low-cost improvisation. (I've heard that the work-arounds and cob-jobs on the old Mir space-station bordered on steampunk with chewing gum and bungee cords.)

via Environmental Graffiti
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Amazon Under Threat From Cleaner Air

The new study identifies a link between reducing sulphur dioxide emissions from burning coal and increasing sea surface temperatures in the tropical north Atlantic, resulting in a heightened risk of drought in the Amazon rainforest.

My head just exploded.

We can't seem to do anything right.
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Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity

Delta Green - be part of the conspiracy. The latest sourcebook for Delta Green, the cult modern day Call of Cthulhu setting, is being financed via fundable. If the target for funding is not met it’s release will be delayed... if it is released at all. A niche setting within a niche system in a hobby in decline, Delta Green is still intensely well loved by those who know about it, making them a good target for the ransom model. Will thinking outside the usual publishing business models save pen and paper RPGs?

I can see this catching on with other niche markets in the Long Tail.

Delta Green has a solid core or devotees, so it's conceivable that the folks at Pagan Publishing could utilize the 1000 true fans model to their benefit.
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ends

Readings 5-9-08

NASA announces that it's going to make an announcement:

WASHINGTON -- NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. This finding was made by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with ground-based observations.

via MonkeyFilter
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DOJ announces indictment of international arms dealer for conspiracy to kill Americans and related terrorism charges

NEW YORK—Michael J. Garcia, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Michele M. Leonhart, the Acting Administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), announced today the unsealing of an indictment against international arms dealer Viktor Bout, a/k/a Boris, a/k/a Victor Anatoliyevich Bout, a/k/a Victor But, a/k/a Viktor Budd, a/k/a Viktor Butt, a/k/a Viktor Bulakin, a/k/a Vadim Markovich Aminov, for, among other things, conspiring to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the FARC) -- a designated foreign terrorist organization based in Colombia -- to be used to kill Americans in Colombia.

via Cryptome
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How to defeat terrorism without terrorizing ourselves

Before September 11, said Sheehan, the United States was "asleep at the switch" while Al Qaeda was barreling down the track. "If you don't pay attention to these guys," said Sheehan, "they will kill you in big numbers." So bin Laden's minions hit U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, they hit the Cole in 2000, and they hit New York and Washington in 2001—three major attacks on American targets in the space of 37 months. Since then, not one. And not for want of trying on their part.

What changed? The difference is purely and simply that intelligence agencies, law enforcement and the military have focused their attention on the threat, crushed the operational cells they could find—which were in fact the key ones plotting and executing major attacks—and put enormous pressure on all the rest.

"I reject the notion that Al Qaeda is waiting for 'the big one' or holding back an attack," Sheehan writes. "A terrorist cell capable of attacking doesn't sit and wait for some more opportune moment. It's not their style, nor is it in the best interest of their operational security. Delaying an attack gives law enforcement more time to detect a plot or penetrate the organization."

Terrorism is not about standing armies, mass movements, riots in the streets or even palace coups. It's about tiny groups that want to make a big bang. So you keep tracking cells and potential cells, and when you find them you destroy them. After Spanish police cornered leading members of the group that attacked trains in Madrid in 2004, they blew themselves up. The threat in Spain declined dramatically.

It looks like Al-Qaeda is a bit overrated, Osama bin Goldstein notwithstanding.

Beware the counterterrorist-industrial complex.

via Schneier on Security
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Chernobyl Watch: Biofuel from Chernobyl Contaminated Lands

I had many doubts when I first heard about this plan. My first thought was, great - let’s do this and use our cars to spread Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout around the world! However, after researching this issue further, I have found some potential benefits.

Currently, scientists estimate that the contaminated lands in Belarus will not be safe for cultivation of food for 300-600 years. Greenfield feels that through repeated harvests of specific types of grain for ethanol feedstock, the land could become safe for food production in as little as 60 years. Prime crops candidates are wheat and sugar beet.

We need to watch the Chernobyl situation closely and minutely. It is a singular opportunity to learn a great deal about the long-term effects of this type of disaster.

As informed citizens we should be aware of this information in regard to consideration and degree of support for future uses of nuclear technology.

Let's not sleep on this one. This knowledge might come in handy someday.

Chernobyl and Eastern Europe
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Mind Control by Cellphone

Although a cell phone is much less powerful than TMS, (transcranial magnetic stimulation) the question still remains: Could the electrical signals coming from a phone affect certain brainwaves operating in resonance with cell phone transmission frequencies? After all, the caller's cerebral cortex is just centimeters away from radiation broadcast from the phone's antenna. Two studies provide some revealing news.

Interesting stuff, but this article more absorbed my thoughts by making me wonder why journalists often feel the need to play the "tinfoil hat" card for a hook?
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The amazing story behind the 256 year-old man

By his own admission he was born in 1736 and had lived 197 years. However, in 1930 a professor and dean at Minkuo University by the name of Wu Chung-chien, found records “proving” that Li was born in 1677. Records allegedly showed that the Imperial Chinese Government congratulated him on his 150th and 200th Birthdays.

So the question is, had he forgotten his own birthday? Was this even the same Li Ching-Yun?

via mental_floss
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archaeology.co.uk: Is Stonehenge Roman?

Were the Romans rather like English Heritage, people who abhor untidiness, and when they came to Stonehenge, they found a somewhat decrepit monument in need of tender loving care, and said: Oh these wretched druids, they never look after their ancient monuments properly – we had better send along a gang to tidy it up and pay due respects to whatever gods were originally worshipped there? But just how extensive was this tidying up? How much of the plan of Stonehenge that has come to us is due to Roman interference?

via Technoccult
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ends