FBI rolls out the heavy gear for Obama's inauguration

Not sparing any precautions, the FBI has deployed a small fleet of vehicles and a load of high tech to aid the security detail for the inauguration ceremonies today. This will include a mobile command post, an evidence collection unit, an armored assault vehicle, and a hardened chamber designed to contain and transport explosives. (images)

stray bullets

Foreign Policy: The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008 Don't miss them this time.

Briton saved dozens in hotel A millionaire private equity broker from London has emerged as a hero who stopped Islamic terrorists from massacring Britons and Americans in their attack on Mumbai.

LAX Tops Nation In Stolen, Missing Luggage Items "Easy pickings?" "Easy pickings." "I wouldn't put anything valuable in LAX" These two LAX employees would only talk if we concealed their identities. "I saw thefts within the first few weeks of working there." They both say there are organized rings of thieves, who identify valuables in your checked luggage by looking at the TSA x-ray screens, then communicate with baggage handlers by text or cell phone, telling them exactly what to look for. (via)

What is truth serum? Indian officials plan to inject captured Mumbai terrorist with the "truth serum," sodium pentothal, but history tells us that the technique isn't up to the task

Particulate Emissions From Laser Printers Do laser printers emit pathogenic toner particles into the air? Some people are convinced that they do. As a result, this topic is the subject of public controversy. Researchers have now investigated what particles the printers really do release into the air.

Black Garlic Introducing a simple food with a wonderfully complex flavor. Black garlic is sweet meets savory, a perfect mix of molasses-like richness and tangy garlic undertones. It has a tender, almost jelly-like texture with a melt-in-your-mouth consistency similar to a soft dried fruit. Hard to believe, but true. It’s as delicious as it is unique. (via)

also:
Two cases of compulsive swearing - in sign language
A Fragment Theory Of Deja Vu
Academics invent a mathematical equation for why people procrastinate (when they were supposed to be writing papers)
Ancient city discovered deep in Amazonian rainforest linked to the legendary white-skinned Cloud People of Peru
Prized sculpture destroyed on trip to Art Basel Miami
How to Stretch a Canvas

don't miss:
The ultimate fate of Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs (via)

viddy:
William Eggleston: I am at war with the obvious

stray bullets (Mumbai edition)

some notes on Mumbai:

Mumbai attacks - city fears five terrorists are 'missing' At least five terrorist gunmen have evaded capture in Mumbai and could make a secondary strike on India's financial capital, it was feared this morning.

Mumbai terrorist: I was ordered to kill 'until the last breath' The sole Mumbai gunman captured alive has told police he was trained in Pakistan and ordered to “kill until the last breath”, according to a leaked account of his interrogation.

Google Earth used by terrorists in India attacks Investigations by the Mumbai police, including the interrogation of one nabbed terrorist, suggest that the terrorists were highly trained and used technologies such as satellite phones, and global positioning systems (GPS), according to police. (Blackberries, too)

Zenpundit: Recommended Reading (for all the "in-depth" you could want)

Global Guerrillas: URBAN TAKEDOWN: MUMBAI (via)
JOURNAL: More on Tactical Innovation

stray bullets

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)

stray bullets

Tinker, tailor, soldier, defector — John le Carré: I nearly left the West John le Carré, the espionage writer, has revealed that he was tempted to defect to the Soviet Union during the cold war.... Le Carré’s remarks are particularly intriguing because his own career as a secret agent was in effect destroyed by the treachery of Kim Philby, the double agent.

Briton was safe-cracker for Osama Bin Laden and Idi Amin He described the Al-Q'aeda head as "friendly" and the Ugandan dictator as "fun". I heard a rumor that when Osama was training with the CIA in the U.S. during the Russia-Afghanistan War that he was known as Tim Osmond. When the first "Wanted" photos were released in the late 1990s, some CIA officers were reported to have said, "Hey, that's Tim!"

Stephen Hawking to unveil strange new way to tell the time Prof Stephen Hawking is to unveil a remarkable £1 million clock with no hands that pays tribute to the world's greatest clockmaker.

Hurricane Ike's Sprawl a Meteorological Mystery Considering the vastly different dangers posed by these storms, it's natural to wonder just why some storms get so big while others stay small, despite having the same hurricane-force winds. Why, in other words, is Ike such a titan? also: History's Worst Storm Surges

also:
Vladmaster - Handmade viewmaster reels (via)
How to Draw Anything in One Step
How To Master Photoshop In Just One Week (via)

viddy:
The Peanut Vendor - Len Lye 1933 (via)
Kunstbar (careful what you drink at the Artbar)
Richie Hawtin 2008 DJ Setup
Bebe Barron on Anaïs Nin
The Natural History of the Chicken part 1/6 (via)

stray bullets

How the Music Business Spent the Summer Killing Itself Labels Pull Albums off iTunes, RIAA Goes After Internet Radio -- When Will They Ever Learn? Idiots. I think this lunacy is driven by lawyers who convince behind-the-times executives that the world is ending in order to fatten their bank accounts with the fees they collect filing cease and desist notices, removing videos from YouTube, and prosecuting their customer base.

The mass graveyard of the blogosphere How many dead blogs do you think exist in the blogosphere today? Take a guess… A couple of million perhaps…? Try again. According to Technorati and PC Mag, in 2007 the number stood at 200 million! Yes, 200 million! Which means blogs are now officially abandoned more often than red headed step children. More research from Perseus on blogging abandonment behaviour found that 66% of blogs hadn’t been updated for two months. So why is it that the blogosphere represents a mass graveyard of unfulfilled intentions? (via)

Clueless smugglers find 'gold' is uranium One thing puzzled them. At night, a report on a local government website said, “they were surprised that, when the lights went out, the treasure sparkled and glittered”. One of the men, identified as Mr Wang, “chipped a piece from it and kept it beside his bed — sometimes playing with it”.... “To prevent the sample being lost or stolen on the way, Mr Wang used tape to stick the unidentified treasure to his body, and it never left him night or day.”

Do No Harm To Humans: Real-life Robots Obey Asimov’s Laws European researchers have developed technology enabling robots to obey Asimov’s golden rules of robotics: to do no harm to humans and to obey them.

Shadow analysis could spot terrorists by their walk By analysing the movements of human shadows in aerial and satellite footage, JPL engineer Adrian Stoica says it should be possible to identify people from the way they walk - a technique called gait analysis, whose power lies in the fact that a person's walking style is very hard to disguise. (via)

Dairy farmers: True IT pioneers The dairy industry was an early adopter of information technology, and dairy farms have been among the most aggressive businesses in the agricultural industry at applying IT. Dairy IT got its start in the 1950s, when an IBM mainframe was used to develop the first dairy records management system and a genetics database...

also:
Nazi-era photos surface in Bolivia
The Global Album Cover Map (via)
Psychic investigator looks into spooky painting (via)
Finding a new position as a mature job hunter
John Titor weighs in on the LHC (entertaining) (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

Anthrax Evidence Called Mostly Circumstantial The evidence amassed by F.B.I. investigators against Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, the Army scientist who killed himself last week after learning that he was likely to be charged in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, was largely circumstantial, and a grand jury in Washington was planning to hear several more weeks of testimony before issuing an indictment, a person who has been briefed on the investigation said on Sunday. (also) (also) all (via)

Falcon 1 suffers another setback Lost aboard the Falcon was the U.S. military's Trailblazer satellite, two small NASA payloads and a cache of cremated human remains, including the ashes of astronaut Gordon Cooper and Star Trek actor James Doohan. (via)

For Wealthy Brazilian, Money From Ore and Might From the Cosmos “I AM connected to the divine, to these forces here,” João Carlos Cavalcanti, the Brazilian mining magnate, said as he swept an arm out across the lily pad-covered lake behind his $15 million mansion. (via)

Lunch with Heather Perry (self-trepanner) It didn't take that long at all, probably about 20 minutes. Eventually I could feel a lot of fluid moving around. Apparently, there was a bit too much fluid shifting around, because they'd gone a little bit too far and I was leaking some through the hole, but this wasn't especially dangerous as there are three layer of meninges before you get to the brain. (via)

also:
Franz Kafka’s porn brought out of the closet (via)
Moscow's House of Fairy-tales (ht)
Blogging Merit Badge (out of stock) (via)
Make bookends from old vinyl records (via)
KLF - The Manual (How to have a Number One the easy way) (via)

viddy:
Balls Deep--Sewers of Bogota: Part 1 of 5 (don't miss it) (via)
How Buildings Learn - Uploaded by Stewart Brand Himself
Ask an Astronomer - What Will Happen to the Earth When the Sun Dies?
Iain Banks interview (audio)
20 Ways to Die Trying to Dunk a Basketball (via)

Sunday Excursions: All over the place

Whenever I go through my Sunday Excursions folder, a loose theme often presents itself. No such luck this week. We're all over the place.

First, we'll try to start off on sound footing with some grooming advice from Joel and the bots:



Man, I miss that show. In 1994 I was injured in a car accident and spent most of six months on my back. MST3K saved my sanity.

mst3kinfo.com
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My stepmother lives in Vermont and is a fine and accomplished artist. Lately, she's been creating sculpture with wood. Her primary tool is a chainsaw. She weighs all of 110 pounds and handles that saw like it was a toothbrush. She has some nice metalwork, too.

LooSeeArt
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Some links:

150 Things You Didn’t Know About The Human World

Don't know how accurate these are, but they're fun anyway.

via The Presurfer
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Colin Wilson World

An appreciation of Colin Wilson - philosopher, critic and novelist.
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Real Military Flix

The world's largest on-line military film and video site.

via Cryptome
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Gene Ween's photography

via linkfilter.net
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Gerry Canavan:

The SITE intelligence group, which monitors terrorist Web sites, recently had a big find: images from a terrorist simulation of Washington, D.C. destroyed by a nuclear bomb.

Turns out the image was from Fallout 3.
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This made the rounds a while back, but some of you might not have seen Animator vs. Animation. Clever and revised.

thanks, Dad
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This is funny:


















WWII history as an internet game

via LedgerGermane
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Wedding of the Vampires



















Mia Mäkilä - Lowbrow and Horror Art

via MINDFVCK
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John Cage - 4' 33"



This is one of the best interpretations I've heard and unlike other video versions, there's a welcome lack of some dweeb trying to explain it all to you. Sorry about the missing second. I guess it was cut off.
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Be seeing you.

Readings 5-21-08

Study Says Carbon Nanotubes as Dangerous as Asbestos

Inhaling carbon nanotubes could be as harmful as breathing in asbestos, and its use should be regulated lest it lead to the same cancer and breathing problems that prompted a ban on the use of asbestos as insulation in buildings, according a new study posted online today by Nature Nanotechnology.

Big challenge for the nanotech community if this bears out.
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As homes foreclose in U.S., squatters move in

Squatting is on the rise across the United States as foreclosures surge, eviction notices mount and homes go unsold for months, complicating the worst U.S. housing slump in a quarter century and forcing real-estate brokers to enlist the help of law enforcement and courts to sell empty houses.

In some regions, squatting is taking on new twists to include real-estate scams in which thieves "rent out" abandoned homes they don't own. Others involve "professional squatters" who move from one abandoned home to another posing as tenants who seek cash from banks as a condition to leave the premises -- a process known by real-estate brokers as "cash for key."

We have to be careful with how we define the term squatter. There are many possible interpretations, some not so good in the eyes of society at large. The cases cited in this article paint squatting strictly as a willful criminal act, while there are many cases where people revitalize abandoned and decaying areas or are so destitute that they just need a place to stay.

Years back, I squatted in London for a while and found that I was helped and encouraged from many quarters, including the local government and even the police. It was decent cold-water council flat in Southwark. A bit of roughing it at first, but after a short while, we had a nice little crib going. We were a small improvement on a largely abandoned and decaying neighborhood.

via Squatter City
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The freedom to say 'no'

Why aren't there more women in science and engineering? Controversial new research suggests: They just aren't interested.

So, in other words, instead of pushing for more women to go into the hard sciences, why not ask them what they would prefer to do?

One thing I found interesting about the study was the evidence showing that a majority of the women preferred to work with people while the men preferred to work with things. A cliché, perhaps, but there seems to be a some truth to this if you buy into this research.

via Arts & Letters Daily
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The List: The Worst Place to be a Terrorist

This reminds me of a moment in Robert Littell's 2002 novel, The Company (p. 707):

"I stumbled across an Israeli report describing how the Russians dealt with a hostage situation," he said. "Three Soviet diplomats were kidnapped in Beirut by a Hezbollah commando. The KGB didn't sit on their hands, agonizing over what they could do about it. They abducted the relative of a Hezbollah leader and sent his body back with his testicles stuffed in his mouth and a note nailed-- nailed, for Christ's sake-- to his chest warning that the Hezbollah leaders and their sons would suffer the same fate if the three Soviets weren't freed. Within hours the three diplomats were released unharmed a few blocks from the Soviet embassy."

But hey, we're America, we don't work that way... right?

I don't necessarily condone this type of activity, but I can safely say that there were no more abductions of Soviet citizens in Lebanon after that exchange. Only Americans and Britons that were held suffering for many years.

I'm conflicted on this.
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ends

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 5-9-08

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

Readings 4-24-08

The Foreign Policy/Prospect Top 100 Public Intellectuals

Here's their bios.

Who got snubbed? Who's undeserving?

I'll start you off: Al Gore?
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If you only read one of these items, read Tomorrow Museum's excellent Science Fiction is for the Renaissance Men.

from:

Crisis happens when we fail to look at the large picture, but who is standing far enough away to see?

to:

Artist Fritz Haeg thinks we should follow Buckminster Fuller’s advice. “Basically, his theory is that the powers that be want us to be specialists,” he tells this month’s Art Review, “Because they don’t want us to see the big picture, because the more you see the big picture, the more you are apt to question things. He’s saying that decades ago, but I think its even more true today.”

and furthermore:

Public Service Announcements have always provided hackneyed obvious information (”Give a hoot, don’t pollute.”) We should have Public Education Announcements: 30 seconds of Spanish phrases, Newton’s Laws, or basic geometry theorems. Everyone would be able to explain the second law of thermodynamics as quickly as we can say “Shoulda Hada V8.”

Brava!

We need more renaissance (wo)men, omnologists, and generalists.

To navigate through this century we'll still need specialists, but as a standard, specialization is limiting. Over-specialization stems from old world guild secrets and old school paranoid nationalism. It is a defunct system and needs to be reformatted. (see)

What we're short on is people like Leonardo, Mary Somerville, Buckminster Fuller and Howard Bloom. What we're woefully bereft of is the "informed citizenry" necessary for a properly functioning democracy as well as an emerging global economy.

Fuse this with the speculative cast of science fiction and we're going somewhere. Science fiction has, collectively, been a sort of surrogate renaissance man in a society needing all the vision it can get.

It will be interesting to see how nascent fields like speculative fiction, future studies, omnology and generalism will grow, merge and transform over time. It would be helpful if more traditional disciplines were to adopt this kind of thinking and help facilitate connections. Entire new fields of study could emerge, like macro-omnology, comparative science, urban synergetics or psychohistory.

There are encouraging signs that this is already happening. Now we need to catch up with the "informed citizenry" part. Start with the kids.
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25 leading-edge IT research projects

Some cool stuff in there, including the Dark Web*, T-rays, vocal joysticks and honeybees.

* not to be confused with Deep Web
via KurzweilAI.net
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RFE/RL Study Explores How Al-Qaeda Exploits Internet

What it is:

"This is a study that really looks at two things," he says. "It looks at the global message that Al-Qaeda puts out and that its affiliates put out. It also looks at the network that is behind that -- and then, how...they get that [message] out to the world. What is the network that brings that [message] to people over the Internet -- because the Internet is really the primary delivery mechanism for Al-Qaeda."

very interesting:

"Al-Qaeda, which was very, very advanced and very, very impressive in its use of new technology, is, I think, a bit behind the curve," Kimmage says. "They are sort of stuck in Web 1.0. They are producing what they think is the coolest content, the best videos, the most impressive press releases. And they are creating the most sophisticated -- the best network -- to distribute it to the web. What's missing is interactivity in user-generated content -- a world in which users generate a lot of the content and in which people what to interact with others. Al-Qaeda really seems stuck in the old model.

via monochrom
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And now for something completely different...

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

KINSHASA, April 22 (Reuters Life!) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

People get a bit touchy about their penises.

via Clumsy Crooks
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Details interviews John Waters

Q: Who’s your most unlikely fan? Did Henry Kissinger ever come up to you and say, "Hey, John—I just loved Female Trouble"?
A: It’s funny you say that, because there is a picture of me and Henry Kissinger hanging on my bulletin board in Baltimore. It was taken at a magazine party. And I do send boxes full of my movies, T-shirts, and that kind of thing to soldiers in Iraq. One whole troop told me they were being bombed while watching Female Trouble.
I wrote the major back and said, "I feel like Bob Hope!" He wrote, "I promise more of them know who you are than Bob Hope!"

via Boing Boing
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ends

Belligerents, terrorists, gangsters and insurgents

From Politics and Soccer:

Prof. (Vanda) Felbab-Brown argues that belligerents derive political benefits from controlling illicit economies. The local population that survives on the illicit economy owes their economic wellbeing to the belligerent group (a term that includes terrorists, insurgents, gangs, etc.). The government, whether its trying to eliminate poppies in Afghanistan, trying to shut down smuggling networks in the Sahara, or trying to eliminate coca in Colombia, is trying to shut down the economies that many ordinary people's lives depend on. Thus, a belligerent group's motivations for controlling an illicit economy is not just that they are greedy (although they may be), but the desire for control over illicit economies can be to gain political power.

A few years back, I read an article comparing terrorist culture with that of American street gangs. The similarities were striking, especially in the case of the Palestinians. I'm still trying to dig up this article. I'll post it when I do.

It's no surprise, really, if you think about it. Belligerent groups have been operating much the way they do today since Biblical times. We band together. We hold territory and control economies with various mechanisms. We repel invaders and invade to assume our neighbors' wealth. We're a bit more sophisticated about it these days, in many ways, but the essential elements are still in place whether it be on a national level or in the hood. (I live in the hood and have for many years. If you pay attention, you become aware of a vibrant micro-economy and social order with distinct and observed rules and conventions. Actions have predictable consequences. The system is regulated by "what goes around comes around" and threat of physical violence. In essence, it's the same as it ever was, in particular, it's nuanced.)

via Kotare

btw,

By the way, has anyone else noticed that since GWB has been in office, domestic terrorism has trickled down to just about nothing?

How much you wanna bet that when the next Democrat president is sworn in, folks all over the country will start dusting off their turd-bombs?

I predict that the next big terror-flap will have a distinct domestic bouquet, probably with a redolence of racism. I'd also lay dollars to dingleberries that some knucklehead will find a way to tie it in with Al-Qaeda.

Terrorphobia: our false sense of insecurity

Take the time to read John Mueller's essay in The American Interest.

For this:

A few days after the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there might never be an “end date” in the “struggle” against terrorism, a point when it would be possible to say, “There, it’s all over with.” More than six and a half years later, his wisdom seems to have been vindicated, though perhaps not quite in the way he intended. At least in its domestic homeland security aspects, the so-called War on Terror shows clear signs of having developed into a popularly supported governmental perpetual-motion machine that could very well spin “till who laid the rails”, as Mayor Shinn so eloquently, if opaquely, puts it in The Music Man. Since none of the leading Democrats or Republicans running for president this year has managed to express any misgivings about this development, it is fair to assume that the “war” will amble on during whatever administration happens to follow the present one.

and this:

Key to this dynamic is that the public apparently continues to remain unimpressed by several inconvenient facts. One such fact is that there have been no al-Qaeda attacks whatsoever in the United States since 2001. A second is that no true al-Qaeda cell (or scarcely anybody who might even be deemed to have a “connection” to the diabolical group) has been unearthed in this country. A third is that the homegrown “plotters” who have been apprehended, while perhaps potentially somewhat dangerous at least in a few cases, have mostly been either flaky or almost absurdly incompetent.

and this:

Our problems do not arise, then, from a national anxiety neurosis, but more from other consequences of the fear of terrorism. One is that when a consensus about a threat becomes internalized, it becomes politically unwise, even disastrous, to oppose it—or even to lend only half-hearted support to it. Another is that the internalized consensus creates a political atmosphere in which government and assorted pork-barrelers can fritter away considerable money and effort on questionable enterprises, as long as they appear somehow to be focused on dealing with the threat. In the present context, the magic phrase, “We don’t want to have another 9/11”, tends to end the discussion.

I'm having trouble seeing an end to the War on Terror. The fall of the Soviet Union pretty much ended the Communist Threat. The only thing that slowed down the ridiculously futile War on Drugs was the War on Terror. What will it take for us to cease this endless and exhausting tilting at windmills?

I'd advise not to cling to any notions that the new administration is going to pull off anything too earth- shattering. I anticipate a fair bit of disillusion in the next four years when euphoric supporters of change find that very little has changed.

It would be unfair to expect too much from the next president. All we should hope for is that this unfortunate manages the best they can with a really crap hand.

via Arts & Letters Daily

Cyber Terrorists Spam Eco Terrorists

The Earth Liberation Front made the news today after four model luxury homes were set ablaze in the Seattle area.

According to The Daily Green, the Street of Dreams development advertised itself as being green, though the company's trademark is high luxury. A sign with the ELF intitials was reportedly found at the scene.

So, as you can imagine, journalists flocked to the ELF websites, only to find them peppered with Viagra ads and a banner link for Swingfest '08, The Worlds Largest Swinger Lifestyle Convention! Motives for the spam hack are unknown, other than, perhaps, to sell some Viagra in anticipation of Swingfest '08.

(note: as of the publishing of this post, access to the ELF sites is sketchy at best. Some times I get a ''Service Unavailable" error, sometimes a text-only display and sometimes a garbled one. Someone has really naffed these sites.)

from The Daily Green
via GPOD

Terrorist Organization Logos

Last night, disinfo.com ran a link to a post on terrorist organization logos. My interest was piqued, so I went to check it out.

What I found was a July, 2007 entry from the blog Ironic Sans with few paragraphs expressing interest in how these logos came to be, who decides, who designs etc. Following that there's a sampling of various logos. What should be noted is that the author was primarily addressing the design elements of the logos and his puzzlement over their origins and meanings, not the organizations themselves.

I thought it was a great post. It was pretty clear what he was trying to get across.

Then... the comments. What resulted was a dogpile of comments, many extremely vitriolic, many made by people who obviously did not read the disclaimer or understand the purpose. The comments run about six times the length of the actual post. It's worth a scan.

What I took away from this: It seems that many people read the first few sentences of the article and then jumped to the pictures and then jumped to conclusions and then spewed out misinformed comments. It reinforces the notion that if you're going to comment on a blog post, you should actually read it first or you're going to come off as a complete imbecile.

Terrorist Attack in Second Life

I don't know what to make of this, but I'm picking up waves of wrongness.

My left hand said, "Gee, racism and terrorism can be fun!"
(sarcasm alert)

My right hand got a micro-chuckle and said, "It's not really real, lighten up."

My transmogrified prehensile macro-podlet said, "Get a real one."





via Foreign Policy (no, really)

(FP seems to find this disturbing)

(Second Life Liberation Army? Am I the only one that finds this a bit ridiculous?)

(I'm not going to say it, but you know what I'm thinking...)